How many times have you said to yourself, “Someone should build an application that does [x]…”, or “Wouldn’t it be easy to add automation to [y]”, or “It would be a lot of fun to work on a project to build [z]”? For me, this has happened a lot, and seems to occur more frequently the longer I’m in this…
When processing data files using SQL Server Integration Services, it is not uncommon to find files with different end-of-line markers for each line in the file. In this post, I will demonstrate how to fix inconsistent line terminators in SSIS to avoid ETL errors. Fix Inconsistent Line Terminators in SSIS In every text file, there are unprintable characters called line…
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…
In my continuing series entitled “On Failure”, I want to talk about skiing. I’m not a great skier. It would probably be a stretch to say that I’m a good skier. Still, I enjoy doing it, and I want to (and can) get better at it. Since I live in the Dallas area, I don’t get a lot of opportunities…
I’m very excited to offer a new course entitled “Advanced SSIS” in the Dallas area this spring. My friend and colleague Andy Leonard and I will be delivering this new 3-day course March 9-11, 2015 at the Microsoft offices in Irving, Texas. This course is intended for those who have experience using Integration Services who are looking to take their…
The first rule of blogging is that you should write about topics you know a lot about. And I know a lot about failure. This post will be the first in a series on the topic, through which I’ll share a few of my own failures and how I’ve done my best to use them to my benefit. In almost…
Social media is the new résumé. In many ways, it’s even better than a résumé – a person’s social media stream can reveal attitudes, biases, and deficiencies that wouldn’t dare appear on a résumé. Your online thoughts – blogs, Instagram pictures, tweets on Twitter, posts on Facebook, among others – help to make up the digital you, which friends and…
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…
This is the third in a series of posts about SSIS parent-child architecture. You can find the index page here. In my previous posts on SSIS parent-child package architecture, I described the benefits of the parent-child package design pattern and demonstrated the implementation of such a pattern in package deployment mode. In this post, I will demonstrate the parent-child pattern…
It’s an odd query, yes, but in preparation to write this post I actually typed the above phrase into my browser. No, I’m certainly not looking to burn down my house. In fact, wait here while I clear my search history, just in case. For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re planning to fry a turkey over the upcoming…