Today is the second day of the 2013 SQL PASS Summit, and I’m again live blogging the event. 8:15: Here we go. Looks like a thinner crowd today. Everyone sleeping in from #sqlkaraoke last night? 8:19: The morning is kicked off with a video montage about networking. It’s good to see emphasis on getting to know your peers. 8:21: Douglas…
Today is the first full day of the PASS Summit 2013 conference. This year I’m again joining the blogger table and will be live blogging throughout the opening ceremonies and the keynote. This year I’m sitting between Colin Stasiuk and Andy Warren. I’ll be updating this post periodically through the keynote. 7:59 am: Found my seat and got wired up. …
It’s that time of the year again – time to make your voice heard as a PASS member. The PASS board elections are upon us, and if you’ were a PASS member as of June of this year, you should receive your ballot via email tomorrow. Remember that this year’s voting window is very narrow – just five days –…
This past weekend I made the relatively short (about 3 hours) trip to the Oklahoma City area to attend and speak at the third annual SQL Saturday event there. I’ve been invited to speak at each of their three events, and I’ve been impressed with each one of them so far. The folks in the OKC and surrounding groups have…
Of the many emerging technologies I’m currently using, there’s nothing that excites me more than Biml. If you’re not familiar with it, Biml (short for Business Intelligence Markup Language) is a language that allows business intelligence developers to programmatically create and document SSIS packages. I’ve found this to be incredibly useful in environments that have a large number of packages,…
When it comes to ETL, I’m a pessimist. Until proven otherwise, I assume that all data is bad, all connections are volatile, and all transformation logic is suspect. As such, I spent a lot of time addressing how to prepare for and handle errors in the ETL pipeline with SSIS. Building packages to expect and properly handle errors is a…
Through the course of my career, I’ve spent time on both sides of the job interview table, which has given me an empathy for both job interviewees as well as their interviewers. The former wants to put his best foot forward to demonstrate (or at least talk about) his most appealing attributes, while the latter seeks to find the best…
I love music. In fact, I like to think that I’m a student of music – although anyone who has heard me sing karaoke would agree that I’m far from having mastered it. I’ve got a taste in music that is as diverse as anyone I know. I enjoy tunes from multiple genres spanning decades of time, and I often…
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be delivering three, one-day preconference seminars this summer prior to three different SQL Saturday events: Iowa City, Iowa – Friday, July 26th (before SQL Saturday 239 – East Iowa) Orlando, Florida – Friday, September 13th (before SQL Saturday 232 – Orlando) Denver, Colorado – Friday, September 27th (before SQL Saturday 190 – Denver) For…
In the first post in this series, I covered the basics of object typed variables in SQL Server Integration Services, along with a brief examination of some potential use cases. In this installment, I’m going to illustrate the most common use of object typed variables in SSIS: using an object variable as an ADO recordset within a loop container to…