This past Saturday March 16th, I had the opportunity to speak once again the .Net Orlando Code Camp.  I presented a session under the SQL Server track titled “Change Data Capture, a developer’s best unknown friend”.  I had better than expected turn-out with about 20 attendees and overall very good… Read more

I have been appointed as PASS Regional Mentor for the Greater Southeast by PASS (http://www.sqlpass.org). I am truly honored to volunteer for this position to help improve our PASS community. These are BIG shoes to fill.

I will be joining my good friend Tim Radney (Twitter |… Read more

Everyone heard about Facebook’s recent purchase of Instagram for $1 billion dollars. No one can imagine how they came with such price tag for a bunch (a big bunch) of pictures with special filters added. I never used Instagram and I don’t think I will ever. I’m happy with my… Read more

On a recent project I was asked to “upgrade” a licensed SQL Server 2008R2 Standard Edition to SQL Server 2008R2 Enterprise Edition. I have done this multiple times with no issues. The “kicker” was that the upgrade required a 48-hour turnaround time but no installation media for SQL Server Enterprise… Read more

I am officially announcing that I have now become an independent consultant and business owner. Becoming independent has always been my dream and I have now decided to follow that dream. I believe it is the right time to do it for my family and myself. It’s time to soar! Read more

This past Saturday January 21, 2012 I had the opportunity to speak at my first IT Pro Camp in Orlando, FL. This event was put together by Blain Barton ( Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter ), Microsoft Senior IT Pro Evangelist and Chad Miller ( Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter… Read more

In some ocassions,  you may run into a runaway, long-running or stucked staging batch with Master Data Services in SQL Server 2008 R2. The issue happens most frequently when a fairly large batch of rows are being processed for update or deletion.

The issue has to do with Service Broker,… Read more

I recently bumped into this very exhaustive list of SSIS tasks, components and samples in CodePlex http://ssisctc.codeplex.com. The list is maintained by SQL Server MVP (Blog|Twitter) and  grouped in the following sections:

• Tools
• Connection Managers
•  Log Providers
• Tasks (for Control Flow)
• Foreach Enumerators
• Script Task

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Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC 0) has a confirmed issue with Master Data Services configuration. The following error is raised by the Master Data Services Configuration Manager when launched:

Before creating an MDS web application, you must correct the following errors:
Internet Information Services (IIS) is not…

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Wow! Just Wow! That’s all I can say to describe how great SQL Saturday 86 was on November 5th in Tampa, FL . I got so much positive feedback from every attendee, speaker and sponsor. Food was great, sessions were amazing, speakers were first class!  I have to say thanks… Read more

Recently, while doing some data scrubbing for a customer I got an interesting error in SSMS with one of my CASE statements. The error received was:

None of the result expressions in a CASE specification can be NULL.

It was a long T-SQL script (and a long night) and could… Read more

This past weekend I participated at GiveCamp Tampa 2011 (http://www.givecamptampabay.org/) as part as the Worldwide GiveCamp (http://www.givecamp.org) weekend sponsored by Microsoft and other partners. Per GiveCamp’s website:

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists…

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Gracias a lo asistentes de mi charla Todo lo que debes saber sobre SSIS en 1 hora! en el evento 24HOP LATAM. La verdad me agrado mucho presentar en espanol. Aun cuando mi primera lengua es espanol, todas las presentaciones tecnicas en el pasado las he realizado en ingles.

Si… Read more

Master Data Services provides a way of de-activating entity members using the StgMemberAttribute table as described in Books On Line http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee633772.aspx

This is a somewhat straightforward approach and requires for you to populate the StgMemberAttribute table with AttributeCode (actual code of the member in MDS), AttributeName as “MDMMemberStatus” and AttributeValue… Read more

Keeping track of all the versions and editions SQL Server instances can be a daunting task if you don’t have the right tools and documentation. A very easy way to obtain version, edition and build information from your SQL Servers is by querying the SERVERPROPERTY function as follows:

SELECT
SERVERPROPERTY(‘Edition’)… Read more

Microsoft has made available for download the SQL Server DENALI CTP3 Demo VHD several weeks ago at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27253. The SQL Server DENALI CTP3 Demo VHD is a fully configured HyperV image of SQL Server Denali CTP3  and SharePoint 2010 good for 180 days. The following software is configured on… Read more

Analysis Services hierarchy aggregations can be easily controlled using unary operators. For example, in accounting there are GL accounts that are grouped in major GL account groups and used in different financial statements like Profit & Loss Statement, Income Statement, Trial Balance, and Balance Sheet. These GL accounts may affect… Read more

This past Saturday August 13th I presented two sessions at SQL Saturday #79 hosted by the South Florida SQL Server User Group (SFSSUG) (Webpage | LinkedIn| Twitter). The first presentation was at 11:00am titled “So, What is BI Semantic Model and why should you care?” and the… Read more

When attempting to browse an Analysis Services cube you may be presented with the following error message:

DefaultMember(Measures,Measures) (1, 1) The ‘[xxx]‘ member was not found in the cube when the string, [Measures].[xxx], was parsed.

The error message is self-explanatory. There is a Default Member being referenced and was not… Read more

MDX can be extended with Visual Basic functions like the FORMAT() and NOW() functions to dynamically generate the current year, month or date member. For example, it can be used as part of a named set to generate current year budget and actuals. It can also be used as part… Read more