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…
It’s day 2 of the PASS Summit. Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day, after my early-morning post-Halloween trip to Seattle. I spent some time with my Microsoft friends in the SQL Clinic and visited several vendor receptions, followed by a quick visit to the karaoke party. Today is the Cosmos DB keynote by Rimma Nehme. I’ve heard Dr. Nehme…
It’s the first full day of the 2017 PASS Summit. As I write this, I am somewhere over the panhandle of Texas headed for Seattle and the rest of my #SQLFamily who are are already at the Summit. It’s been a bit strange for the last few days as I kept up with Summit goings-on. I typically arrive in Seattle…
In a nutshell, Biml is automation for SSIS package creation. Biml is an acronym for Business Intelligence Markup Language, which is an XML-based language and interpreter to allow programmatic construction of SSIS packages. If you are building a lot of similar SSIS packages, or the metadata for the packages changes frequently, Biml can significantly reduce the amount of time and…
When designing the ETL architecture for new or changing systems, one of the more common needs is to create a process that copies all of the data from a set of tables (perhaps even all tables) from a source system to a destination database. This is especially prevalent when building an operation data store (ODS), or building a set of…
Some time back, while pulling into a local coffee shop, I spotted a stranded motorist in the parking lot. Per the Texan code of ethics, I was duty bound to walk over and offer my assistance, and in doing so I discovered that someone else had already stopped to help. The motorist was in the driver’s seat turning the key…
Having the right tools for the job makes the work much more efficient. However, for those just starting out in SQL Server land, it may not be clear which tools are useful or appropriate for a given task. I regularly field questions about which tools I use on my development machines, and why. To that end, I’ve compiled a brief…
I’ve spent a lot of time browsing and participating in online technical forums. In my early years in the industry I asked a lot of questions, and as my skills grew I evolved to the point where I was answering more questions than I was asking. The questions and answers I encountered were quite varied, but there was one specific…
Those who follow my blog know that I write a lot about data quality. Measuring and improving the quality of data is an important part of any data initiative, especially in the data warehousing space. While data quality does get its share of attention, there is a concept that is equally important but is sadly overlooked during most data projects:…
Data warehouse projects are among the most visible and expensive initiatives an organization can undertake. Sadly, they are also among the most likely to fail. At one time, Gartner reported that more than 50% of data warehouses would fail to make it to user acceptance. Because of the size of investment (both time and money) required, the success of such…