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…
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…
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…
I’m happy to announce that I have been selected to present at the SQL PASS Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina this October. I’ll be delivering a session entitled “Data Cleansing in SQL Server Integration Services”, in which I’ll cover various ways to detect and cleanse dirty data using tools built into (or accessible from) SQL Server Integration Services. This will…
Since the release of Visual Studio 2012, business intelligence developers have been limited in how much they could use this tool due to the fact that it did not support BI project types (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS). Today, that limitation is now gone with the release by Microsoft of SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012. …
Note: This will be the first post in a short series on using object typed variables (also known as SSIS object variables) in SQL Server Integration Services. When defining variables in SSIS, the ETL developer has several data type options to choose from depending on the information to be stored in each variable. Included in the options are String, Boolean,…
OK, I’m not really going to break it. I’m just going to beat it up a little bit. This Thursday evening, I’ll be working my home turf at the North Texas SQL Server User Group monthly meeting, presenting “When ETL Goes Bad: Handling Errors and Anomalies in SSIS” at 6:15 at the Microsoft campus. In this hour-long presentation, I’ll go…
I’m happy to announce that the book I’ve been working on for the past two years, SSIS Design Patterns, is complete and has been released for sale as of today. I got the unique privilege to work alongside SSIS rock stars Andy Leonard, Jessica Moss, Matt Masson, and Michelle Ufford to scribe what will hopefully be a must-have book for…
During my visit to Denver last September for SQL Saturday 52, I spent a while talking with Marc Beacom, who mentioned that the 3 PASS chapters in and around Denver hold their monthly meetings on consecutive nights. When I brought up my love for snowskiing, he suggested that we combine a ski trip with a speaking trip. Thus began the…