Excel is a significant source of data in most enterprises. Therefore there is a large amount of Excel work being done in SSIS to integrate and align that information across the business. Most of the time, we import it and redirect it to find new rows through lookups and conditional…

Any of us can work with some simple MDX queries and get them to do what we want, but in order to understand what we’re working with we need to understand how Analysis Services processes queries. This means we need to identify the two major parts of the SSAS engine.

Security in SSAS is a simple yet powerful application of windows integrated security. MDX adds extra power to this by allowing us to conditionally apply security and allow or deny specific sets of data within more global parameters. The most common question I get about security is: How do I…

A quick clarification on something I said the other day to a group of students in one of our quick start engagements. I was not aware that you ever needed quotes around a calculated measure expression, but apparently you did. In SQL 2000 Analysis Services they were required, but you… Read more

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I bet you didn’t know Pragmatic Works has our own YouTube channel ? Check it out at

There is some great videos of our trainers talking about our classes, discussing important technical topics in an introductory way, and you’ also find some great demos of some of the best features… Read more

More awesome happenings from Pragmatic Works, Wrox, and SQLServerCentral.com. Check out our Upcoming Webinar Series next week. They are free, but registrations fill up fast and many events are close to capacity or registrants. Click the Link below to register for either one of our upcoming series on 10 Style… Read more

There are sometimes some cool things you can do with a language that is not really it’s primary focus. T-SQL has functionality in it to work with the filesystem, send mail, handle message queuing, etc, ,but its usually a combination of technologies and these statements that is the best solution.

When configuring a SSAS Dimension, there are many important properties to pay attention to. This blog will give you a heads up on them and why they are important:

AttributeHierarchyEnabled – This enables the attribute hierarchy for calculations, sorting, and other use.

AttributeHierarchyVisible – This controls whether the attribute is…

I often get asked when we are discussing loading dimension tables in SSIS, why the key columns from the table we are looking up against don’t come through the no match output in the lookup transform for the columns that don’t match. The answer is straightforward but not always apparent.…

Ever wanted to liven up your life some with some color in your day to day DBA duties. There are a few things you can do to make your SSMS an even better tool for your day to day and help keep you out of trouble. You can choose colors…

There are several ways for calculating “To-Date” calculations the longer way. These normally include a more granular level of control and less reliance on default options. The two functions in this post are examples of that added control and functionality, not provided in the WTD, MTD, etc.. functions.

Last Periods…

There are lots of ways to calculate time comparisons in MDX, but there are some great shortcuts. The functions WTD, MTD, QTD and YTD allow you to work with Week, Month, Quarter, and Year, respectively. In ways that would require more coding than normal using a different function or method.

We have a lot of projects in our organizations that require us to work with database systems other than SQL Server. While we obviously have our preference, these other systems are a fact of life in enterprise organizations and each lends it’s unique pros and cons to any challenging project.

It’s not often that we find stories that make us laugh out loud, unless they have to do with situations like this:

I’m gonna admit I’m a bit jealous of the above:). At any rate,check out this story about a local telecom that  got beat on speed  by a carrier…

One of the most aggravating things when work with the SSIS expression language is when you have to combine file names and losing consistency because you forgot to put backslashes in and the filename is wrong. 

I have hit this wall a bunch of times and I use a trick…

We have a lot of projects in our organizations that require us to work with database systems other than SQL Server. While we obviously have our preference, these other systems are a fact of life in enterprise organizations and each lends it's unique pros and cons to any challenging project.…

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Ok Guys and Gals. I know I have been a slow blogger thus far in 2010. To try and make up for it I have been speaking like crazy. I most recently spoke at the West Palm Beach SQL Server Users Group on Building Analysis Services Cubes in SSAS 2008.… Read more