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RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:49:47 GMT

Thanks for your feedback. I am intending to come up with the next part of Booster Kit as Booster Kit - Part II. I have know this tool when I used to work with DotNet years back, but have not used it much. I have used TFS and VSS. I would give this a try, and if I find it as good as you described, I would definitely include it in my list. :-)

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Luc Magnée — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:05:34 GMT

Hi Siddarth, Thanks for a very interesting article!In the list of tools I would suggest something that most BI developer forget, although it might save them lots of time, certainly for SSIS projects and to a lesser extend for SSAS / SSRS projects (depending of the complexity): Source Version Control. After all, even if we are strictly speaking no software developers, we build custom tailored systems for our customers and the same development rules should apply.Since most projects I've seen so far imply a single developer or a very small team per project, I've been searching the web for some cheap, or even better, free Source Version Control tools. I've found and recently tested a pair of open source and freely downloadable tools allowing to set up basic Version Control:[url=http://tortoisesvn.net/]TortoiseSVN[/url], a Windows Shell extension and [url=http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/]AnkhSVN[/url], a plug-in for Visual Studio. They just take a few minutes to install and, at first use, 1/2 a day to get started with the concept. Once used to work with it, you'll soon ask yourself how you could ever miss it!

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

RBarryYoung — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:01:01 GMT

[quote][b]SBS-291204 (11/24/2009)[/b][hr]Mate, I think you'll find Jamie Thomson is a man... unless he's not telling us something?[/quote]Actually, I think that you'll find that Jamie Thomson is [b][i]THE[/i][/b] Man, especially when it comes to helping people getting started with BIDS and SSIS... :-)

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:18:19 GMT

Serious Apollogies Jamie ! :-D

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Jamie Thomson — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:30:07 GMT

[quote][b]SBS-291204 (11/24/2009)[/b][hr]Mate, I think you'll find Jamie Thomson is a man... unless he's not telling us something?[/quote]Thank you man! :-)I didn't know about this article until yesterday evening when Siddharth blurted out in front of about 40 fellow SQL folks that he thought I was a woman! Also, the law of sod means that I had taken a couple of my project colleagues along with me for the 1st time - so you can imagine the stick that I'm getting at work this morning!!!I am, and always have been, a bloke! :-)

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

jacob sebastian — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:07:26 GMT

Thanks Siddarth!It is a very interesting article.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

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RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

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RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

charlie.smith — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:34:57 GMT

Good work Siddharth. Thank you for sharing this with us.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

tony-591909 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:49:24 GMT

Thanks Siddharth. You're a brilliant young man. Keep them coming. All the best. Tony

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:49:01 GMT

There are 3 typos in this article1) I have mentioned "She" for Jamie Thomson, instead of "He". 2) In the complexity measure section, it should be "allocating" instead of "allocation"3) Instead of RSS Scripter, it should be RSScripter. I should have mentioned author Jasper Smith's name besides it.I am already aware of it. Still, thanks for pointing this out and thanks for your feedback.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Sam Greene — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:27:05 GMT

The title RSS Scripter.Should be chagned to RSScripter.Enjoying the concept so far...

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:21:43 GMT

Thanks for drawing my attention towards this thing. I do agree with your advise.I mentioned it's a sample document ("sample of one such document"), and sections of it would have gone obsolete or may be a wrong suggestion.My intention was to suggest a template or prototype of sections to be covered for creating such document. Next time I would take care of this point. Thanks for the feedback.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Oleg Netchaev — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:12:49 GMT

Siddharth,This is a very useful article, thank you. I do have some comments regarding the [b]Standards for T-SQL Coding[/b] document. There is no doubt that existence of such document is fully justified for a successful implementation of any project, but I believe that you should consider adding a small disclaimer after the link to your "[b]sample of one such document[/b]" stating that this is just a sample which by no means is intended for anybody’s serious consideration. This is because the sample document is ridden with quite few questionable and even plain wrong recommendations. Your article is read by SQL Server Central subscribers of all levels, and a small disclaimer could be useful. Here is the small list of examples which I believe maybe considered as questionable by many:[quote]"System level stored procedures are named using a prefix 'SP__' (two underscores)". [/quote][p]This is still ill advised despite the two underscores IMHO.[/p][p]The comment about the text data types:[/p] [quote]"There are a lot of bugs associated with replicating tables containing text columns. So, if you don't have to store more than 8KB of text, use CHAR(8000) or VARCHAR(8000) datatypes instead."[/quote] [p]This is just plain wrong because the page size in SQL Server is 8K, the maximum number of bytes of in row data of a single record is 8060, and while SQL Server engine will allow you (with warning) to create a table which can potentially have records wider than (if you opt for varchar(8000)), maintaining a table like this is a recipe for disaster because this table will be subjected to occasionally (not always) failing to insert and/or update some of its records.[/p][quote]"IDENTITY columns can run out of numbers at some point, depending on the data type selected; numbers can't be reused automatically, after deleting rows; and problems may arise if you are using replication. So, come up with an algorithm to generate a primary key in the front-end or from within the inserting stored procedure".[/quote] [p]Even Oracle developers don’t use this approach any more as they have nextval function to their disposal to retrieve the next available value from existing sequence. With SQL Server there are many different ways to deal with issues such as filling the holes after deletes (if one perceives this as an issue) and setting up seeds for replication to still work flawlessly.[/p][quote]"Minimize the use of NULLs, as they often confuse the front-end applications, unless the applications are coded intelligently to eliminate NULLs or convert the NULLs into some other form." [/quote][p]If developers are not capable to intelligently code the applications then it is too bad for them, but still DBA should not just nod and start creating a whole bunch of defaults to insert empty strings, zeroes and 9999-12-31s in place of respectable null values.[/p]Lack of a small disclaimer aside, the article is great. I really like the Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit section.Oleg

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

SQLRNNR — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:37:11 GMT

Nice Article

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

mike_barns21 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:42:03 GMT

I loved this! thanks!

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:32:56 GMT

I didn't get the meaning. If you would like to see something in this kit, or something that you didn't think belongs to this kit, please add your feedback. In case if you feel that this idea is garbage, in that case thanks for reading this article. :-)

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

bella_porter — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:13:40 GMT

This is an interesting kit! I wonder how hard it is to understand!

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

giovi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:57:30 GMT

Hi SiddarthWhen talking about 2005 and/or operational reporting, yes, I agree stored procedures work well.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:50:19 GMT

I agree. When one has the leisure of purchasing licenses of 3rd party tools, one can always do that.I have just tried to list tools that incurrs no cost.Also using of stored procedures is/was required in the 2005 SSRS version. Even in DW environments, operational reporting can be a requirement when one wants to compensate for real time refresh of data from cubes. Cubes generally are refreshed at specific intervals, and the data generally changed during those intervals is facilitated thru operational reporting using operational reports right from the OLTP system.This is my viewpoint. Thanks for your feedback.

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

giovi — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:34:12 GMT

Hi siddarth, couple of things captured my interest:- creating stored procedures for reports; is this wise in a MS BI environment? with a datawarehouse and cubes, one of things I found out best to use is a 3rd party report/analysis tool which truly uses the cubes. This saves a lot of effort; there is pretty much stuff, MS gold partners out there, delivering things at the level of pro-clarity- documentation; although the product is not at the level to show full interdependancies, the BI documenter will be of use to many- use the metadata fields in the database, as well descriptions in cube dimensions to extract them with automated tools

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:19:35 GMT

I came to know that just before 1 month. But this article was submitted long before that. My apollogies for the same. Pardon me Jamie, you can beat me up for that during the User Group meeting on 26th :-)

RE: Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

SBS-291204 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:39:26 GMT

Mate, I think you'll find Jamie Thomson is a man... unless he's not telling us something?

Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:03:32 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit[/B]