Home Forums SQLServerCentral.com Editorials What Is the Hardest Feature to Learn About SQL Server? RE: What Is the Hardest Feature to Learn About SQL Server?

  • Service Broker is a bit awkward to comprehend at first, even once you get it working. But I think the hardest feature to learn is Analysis Services. It's a completely different language and paradigm to describe the data. I get the basics, you're defining relationships between your fact and dimension tables, metrics, attributes, hierarchies within the data, etc. But there's a lot less visibility inside the workings of it (DMVs and such), MDX and DMX instead of standard SQL, and data mining algorithms that boggle the mind.

    While I'm here,

    chrisn-585491 (7/18/2014)


    next week I'm supposed to be ETL master of the universe and design SSIS packages in my spare time. (Any one want to help port VFP .dbf files to SQL Server 2008R2?)

    I'd recommend you use the OLE DB provider for Visual FoxPro

    http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14839

    and in your "OLE DB Source" properties set AlwaysUseDefaultCodePage=True

    I've had better results with that then trying to use the JET or ACE OLE DB providers with DBF files.