Wrangling large or complex Excel workbooks in SSIS can be a challenge. From managing data types (more about that in this post by Koen Verbeeck) to addressing multiple worksheets in a single document, configuring SSIS to properly read from or write to Excel documents is tedious at best. While there are no silver bullets to completely solve these problems, I’ve…
Perspective can make or break a career. Maintaining a proper perspective is very often the differentiating factor between a good technologist and an incredible one. In my 15-ish years in IT, I’ve said a lot of dumb things. Many of them I’ve forgotten, but I can’t shake the memory of one particular phrase I uttered more than a few times…
The last two days have been an absolute blur. As I first posted this week, I had planned to blog daily about my goings-on, but I’ve been running nonstop – all good things, fortunately – but it interrupted my plans to blog every day. Day 3: Tuesday 08:00am: Headed back to the MVP Summit. Rain again. 06:00pm: Back in Seattle,…
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” No, not the end-of-year festival of repetitive music, overeating, and trampling on other people to find that perfect gift. No, it’s time again for the PASS Summit, the annual gathering of SQL Server and data professionals from around the world. The event, which is run by the organization formerly known as the…
Recently I was building a new virtual machine for presentations, and loaded up my usual battery – Windows 7, SQL Server 2012, and SSDT-BI. The installation of these pieces went as expected, and everything appeared to work well – until I attempted to execute an SSIS package on this new setup. When I did so, I received the following cryptic…
There’s a brand new business intelligence conference launching next month in Denver, Colorado. The Mile High Tech Con is a three-day event taking place July 24-26, 2014, and is aimed at business intelligence practitioners, data analysts, and information managers/CIOs. From the event website: Featuring three days of sessions and events focusing on Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Mile High Tech…
I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at the SQL PASS Summit this fall. The summit will be held during the first week of November in Seattle, Washington. This will be my seventh year attending the PASS Summit, and my fourth year as a speaker. This year I will be delivering a new presentation entitled “Building Bullet-Resistant SSIS…
Next month, I’ll be making a couple of stops at SQL Saturday events in the south. On May 3, I’ll be attending SQL Saturday #285 in Atlanta and presenting my SSIS Performance session. I’ll be traveling with my good friend and neighbor Ryan Adams, who is also presenting at the event. In addition, several of my Linchpin People cohorts are…
It’s a little over a week until this year’s SQL Saturday festivities kick off in Lisbon, Portugal, and I’m very excited to be a part of it. Registration is nearly full, so if you’re in the area and are planning on attending, register now! For this event, I’m delivering a full day workshop entitled “Real World SSIS: A Survival Guide”,…
Redundancy is sometimes a good thing. However, redundant code usually isn’t. Creating multiple copies of the same coding logic – whether it’s a C# script, T-SQL procedure, SSIS package, or otherwise – leads to inefficiencies in maintaining the same code base in several locations. This design pattern tends to lead to a technical debt that is extremely expensive to repay….