One can use the nodes() method and CROSS APPLY/OUTER APPLY to do this in a SET based fashion using a single SQL statement.  We had demonstrated this before in some of our Report Server queries as well.  Here is an example of how to do that:

We will first create a demo table:
IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM SYS.objects WHERE TYPE = 'U' AND NAME = 'AP_DEMO')
BEGIN
DROP TABLE AP_DEMO
END
GO
CREATE TABLE dbo.AP_DEMO
(
TRANSACTION_ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
Xml_Data XML NOT NULL
)
GO

And now insert into this table 2 records – note that the XML that is being inserted has a three layer hierarchy – One Transaction can have 1-N Services and 1 Service can have 1-N Responses.  Also note that we are using the row value constructor feature of SQL Server 2008 to do these inserts.

INSERT INTO AP_DEMO (XML_DATA)
VALUES
(
‘<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>
<Root>
<Transaction>
<Tattrib1>Test1</Tattrib1>
<Tattrib2>100</Tattrib2>
<Service>
<Id>1</Id>
<Name>Service1</Name>
<Response>
<Key>KeyTest1</Key>
<Value>Value1</Value>
<Point>10</Point>
</Response>
</Service>
</Transaction>
<Transaction>
<Tattrib1>Test2</Tattrib1>
<Tattrib2>53</Tattrib2>
<Service>
<Id>100</Id>
<Name>Service2</Name>
<Response>
<Key>KeyTest2</Key>
<Value>Value2</Value>
<Point>90</Point>
</Response>
</Service>
</Transaction>
</Root>’)
,
(‘<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>
<Root>
<Transaction>
<Tattrib1>Test3</Tattrib1>
<Tattrib2>1000</Tattrib2>
<Service>
<Id>9</Id>
<Name>Service20</Name>
<Response>
<Key>KeyTest3</Key>
<Value>Value3</Value>
<Point>99</Point>
</Response>
</Service>
</Transaction>
<Transaction>
<Tattrib1>Test4</Tattrib1>
<Tattrib2>999</Tattrib2>
<Service>
<Id>87</Id>
<Name>Service30</Name>
<Response>
<Key>KeyTest4</Key>
<Value>Value4</Value>
<Point>97</Point>
</Response>
</Service>
</Transaction>
</Root>’)

And now, we can extract this data using the nodes() method and applying CROSS APPLY at it to extract out each hierarchy:

SELECT
svc.value('(Tattrib1/text())[1]', 'varchar(100)') as Txn_Attribute_1
, svc.value('(Tattrib2/text())[1]', 'varchar(100)') as Txn_Attribute_2
, rsp.value('(Id/text())[1]', 'int') as Service_Id
, rsp.value('(Name/text())[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as [Service_Name]
, val.value('(Key/text())[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as Response_Key
, val.value('(Value/text())[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as TSR_Value
, val.value('(Point/text())[1]', 'int') as TSR_Point
FROM
AP_DEMO
CROSS APPLY Xml_Data.nodes('//Transaction') AS Txn(svc)
CROSS APPLY svc.nodes('Service') AS svc(rsp)
CROSS APPLY rsp.nodes('Response') as rsp(val)
GO


This will give the following output:

Txn_Attribute_1 Txn_Attribute_2 Service_Id Service_Name Response_Key TSR_Value TSR_Point
Test1           100             1          Service1     KeyTest1     Value1    10
Test2           53              100        Service2     KeyTest2     Value2    90
Test3           1000            9          Service20    KeyTest3     Value3    99
Test4           999             87         Service30    KeyTest4     Value4    97


As you can see from above, one can easily extract out the data from a XML data type column in a table by using a single SQL statement.  Of course, one should ensure that one has proper filter conditions in the WHERE clause on properly indexed columns and is also making use of XML indexes in order to ensure a good execution plan for the SQL.

Hope this small code snippet helps in your work.  Wish all of our readers in the US a very Happy Thanksgiving.

http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/blog/2011/05/17/infographic-evolution-of-computer-languages/

“I just joined a new company and was given a VM on which my domain account was part of the Administrators group but the SQL Server 2008 R2 install was done by the IT team and even by using my Windows account, I cannot login to the instance.  I tried using the “sa” account thinking that they might have left the password as blank but keep getting errors.  How can I resolve it?  My understanding was/is that if my Windows account is part of the Administrators group on the local machine/VM, I should be able to log in since the BUILTIN\Administrators group is always by default assigned sysadmin rights on a newly created instance.  Is that no longer the case in SQL Server 2008 R2?”

Yes, as part of the new security features in SQL Server 2008, by default, the local Windows group “BUILTIN\Administrators” is no longer made part of the sysadmin fixed server role.  You have to explicitly add it if you want that to be the case. It is very well documented in BOL and MSDN and we would recommend that you go through this article to familiarize yourself with the security changes in SQL Server 2008 R2:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc280562.aspx

While helping the user above to resolve the issue, it turned out that IT Admin had used a domain group that only IT team members were a part of and a) Installed in Windows Authentication mode, and b) Only made that group a part of the sysadmin role.  The user above tried to get in by making changes to the registry to change the authentication to mixed mode by changing the value for this registry setting to 2:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer\LoginMode

Or in the case of a named instance:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.n\MSSQLServer\LoginMode (n: Instance nbr of the named instance)

Post re-starting the service, it did change the authentication mode to mixed mode, however due to un-successful attempts and the password policy in place, the “sa” account was locked out/disabled.  One can easily enable it but first one needs to be able to get in with sysadmin privs. and then make the changes.  Best option was to get one of the IT team members to login and post it, add additional logins, enable the “sa” account, set it’s password and then make whatever changes needed for the logins/their access levels etc.  The user did that and was on his way to managing the newly created instance.  One can enable a disabled/locked SQL Server account through the GUI or by using the “ALTER LOGIN” statement as we had shown in a previous post here.

http://lifehacker.com/5818368/google-apps-v-office-365-feature-showdown-which-should-you-use

http://updates.merc-int.com/qualitycenter/qc90/others/qcexplorer/index.html

Post the install, just bring it up, type in the address (for QCBin or SiteAdmin – sabin) in the space above, press Go and you are all set.

http://nosql-database.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web

• Oracle documentation – here.

• Oracle-Base post – here.

Let’s use SSMS to connect to Analysis Services instance first.  In case you have never done that before, when you connect, select “Analysis Services” from the drop-down in the Server Type, the proper Server Name (your instance) and the authentication and you will be connected to the Analysis Services instance in which we will restore the back-up of the Analysis Services Database:

Once connected, right click on “Databases” and select “Restore”:

You will be presented with a very simple “Restore Database” window – most of the items are self explanatory – you would browse to select the location of your backup file (we selected the production backup file in the example below):

Once that is done, you need to then give a name for the restored database (in our example, we are calling it PRODCOPY), select a storage location using the browse button, Allow for the database overwrite if it already exists on the instance, choose to overwrite the security information and if the backup was encrypted, provide the password so that you can move ahead with the restore process:

Once that is done, you would be able to restore the database on that instance and then do configuration changes, data source changes etc.

Another way of doing the restore: In case you are not a GUI kind of guy and like to us scripts, you can also use XMLA.  You can read up on the command here.  You can invoke XMLA by right clicking on the Analysis Services instance and choosing “New Query” and XMLA.  The command parameters are the same as you saw in the GUI option above so add the values appropriately and then execute it in order to complete the restore process.

Resources:

• XMLA – here.
• Backup and Restore Analysis Services Databases – article on SQLServerPerformance.com by Ashish Kumar Mehta – here.
• MSDN post on backing up and restoring Analysis Services Database – here.
• Database Journal Article on restoring Analysis Services Database using Windows Powershell and SQL Server 2008 AMO – here.

Here are some of the URLs to help you get up-to-speed on Denali:

• You can download the CTP from here.
• BOL for Denali – here.
• What’s new in Denali – here.
• MVP Michael Otey’s post on the new features in Denali – here.
• Future SQL Server Editions page on MSFT site – here.
• Analysis Services Roadmap for Denali – post on blogs.technet.com – here.