The SQL Server community is just awesome. I can’t say that enough. I may sound like a broken record when I keep repeating these things, but I owe a great deal to the community. I’ve worked hard in my career, but I am certain I would not be where I am today were it not for the connections and relationships…
May 3rd represents a small but significant milestone in my career. It was 15 years ago today, on May 3, 2008, when I delivered my first public technical presentation. That event, as brief as it was, helped to set in motion a chain of events that I could never have predicted. In 2008, I was working in healthcare, and had…
In just a couple of weeks, the PASS Summit will return to Seattle, Washington. This one will be extra special, since it’s going to be the first in-person Summit in three years. When COVID upended normal life back in March of 2020, it also had a huge impact on in-person events. That year, the PASS Summit was changed from in-person…
The COVID-19 global pandemic was by far the biggest influencer of 2020. This virus has cost over 1.8 million lives worldwide, and has upended normal life and commerce for most everyone. Many thousands of businesses were forced to close, costing millions of jobs. For those of us in the data community, we learned of one additional business casualty just before…
For the better part of 15 years, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been the go-to enterprise extract-transform-load (ETL) tool for shops running on Microsoft SQL Server. More recently, Microsoft added Azure Data Factory (ADF) to its stable of enterprise ETL tools. In this post, I’ll be comparing SSIS and Azure Data Factory to share how they are alike and…
Today is the first full day of the PASS Summit, and this morning we kicked things off with a 2-hour opening ceremony and keynote. Networking and Growth PASS president Grant Fritchey starts things off appropriately by focusing on networking and career growth. We say it every year, but it bears repeating: the most important thing you’ll get out of being…
For organizations using SQL Server 2012 and newer, the SSIS catalog is the ideal tool for storing, executing, and monitoring ETL logic. The SSIS catalog includes built-in reports that show execution activity for current and historical operations. While these built-in reports are very useful, they have one significant limitation: they can only be viewed from within SQL Server Management Studio….
It’s keynote time again! The second full day of the conference starts now, and like yesterday, I’ll be live-blogging during the keynote announcements. Our community Wendy Pastrick starts us off by sharing a bit of the softer side of the Summit – some of the stories, the networking opportunities, and the relationships built around this now 20-year-old event. We learn…
Today is the first full day of the PASS Summit in Seattle, Washington. This is the 20th year of the Summit, which brings together several thousand data professionals for a week of learning and networking. This morning, I will be live-blogging the keynote. This post will be updated periodically through the course of the keynote. If you are not in…
Last year, I celebrated the holiday season by blogging daily during the 11 days leading up to Festivus, writing about SSIS, reporting, and leaving data trails. I had so much fun doing that stretch that I’m doing it again this year for Festivus 2017. Starting today and continuing through Festivus Eve (December 22nd), I’ll publish a post per day on…