The Midlands PASS chapter will hold our normally scheduled meeting on Thursday, October 2, 2008, to host SQL Server MVP Andy Leonard. Andy is a mentor with Solid Quality Mentors and an expert in application architecture, SQL Server development, and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) in particular. He will present on Incremental Loads, Change Data Capture, and SSIS 2008.

The meeting will once again be held at Training Concepts off of Berryhill Road. We will begin our meet and greet time at 6:15 PM as usual and start the at 6:45 PM. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would be interested in attending. If you haven’t already done so and plan on attending, please RSVP (kbriankelley {at} acm {dot} org) as soon as possible so we can ensure we have enough space and food. If you have time to help with setup, please email me and we’ll plug you in!

I'll send out an agenda, contact phone numbers, and the building code next week.

Abstract:

Change Data Capture is a new SQL Server 2008 feature. One benefit of CDC is data filtering for Incremental ETL in SSIS: only touching rows that are new, updated, or have been deleted! In this presentation I walk through enabling Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008, then present an overview of an SSIS package that utilizes Change Data Capture to perform Incremental ETL.

Bio:

Andy Leonard is a Solid Quality Mentor, SQL Server database and Integration Services developer, SQL Server MVP, and engineer. He is a co-author of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services , Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers , MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-441): Designing Database Solutions by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 , and the recently-released e-book Mastering Visual Studio Team System Database Edition - Volume 1 . Andy founded and manages VSTeamSystemCentral.com and maintains two blogs there: Applied Team System and Applied Business Intelligence . He also blogs for SQLBlog.com. Andy's background includes web application architecture and development, VB, and ASP; SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS); data warehouse development using SQL Server 2000 and 2005; and test-driven database development.

I've been playing with WSUS lately and I've been less than satisfied with the reporting. Since the information I need to get at exists in a SQL Server database, I've been writing my own queries to get it out. Here's a basic query to get out what systems in a particular group haven't checked in within the last week. There are 3 basic tables which have to be put together: tbComputerTarget (contains the information on the computers), tbTargetGroup (contains the information on the groups), and tbTargetInTargetGroup (join table between the two). I have found cases where a system will have checked in to WSUS so that we see it's computer name, IP address, etc., but it doesn't actually report a status time (nor any status information), hence an OR for LastReportedStatusTime is NULL to include those systems, too.

DECLARE @GroupName nvarchar(512)
SET @GroupName = '<Group Name>'

SELECT
    FullDomainName
  , IPAddress
  , LastReportedStatusTime
FROM tbComputerTarget CT
  JOIN tbTargetInTargetGroup TTG
    ON CT.TargetID = TTG.TargetID
  JOIN tbTargetGroup TG
    ON TTG.TargetGroupID = TG.TargetGroupID
WHERE TG.Name = @GroupName
   AND (DATEDIFF(dd, LastReportedStatusTime, GETDATE()) > 6
            OR LastReportedStatusTime IS NULL)

It's been a while since I've written a blog post that wasn't a user group announcement. Here's what I've been up to:

•  Working on a security chapter for a forthcoming in-print book on SQL Server 2008.
•  Playing a lot of Heroscape with my boys.
•  Helping develop the junior high youth ministry at Spears Creek Baptist Church.
• Getting my Be Encouraged devotionals back on track. Although I need to get the web site up to date again.
•  Working a ton of projects at work.
•  Putting SQL Response through its paces.
•  Listening to one of my best friends rant about having to depend on Julius Jones to score points for his fantasy football team in this upside down year in the NFL.

In the next week or so I hope to get back to posting regularly again.