ETL Antipattern: Start With Writing Code
In this first post in my series on ETL Antipatterns, I’m going to discuss one of the most common missteps when building an extract-transform-load (ETL) process: jumping straight into...
2020-12-12
21 reads
Tim Mitchell
The Eleven Days of Festivus 2020
We’re rounding the corner to the second half of December, which means it’s time for my favorite holiday: Festivus! Like many of you, I enjoy gathering around the Festivus...
2020-12-12
3 reads
Creating Your First Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory has grown in both popularity and utility in the past several years. It has evolved beyond its significant limitations in its initial version, and is quickly...
2020-09-08 (first published: 2020-08-28)
498 reads
My New Favorite Demo Dataset: Dunder Mifflin Data
Those of us who write technical articles and deliver technical presentations are always on the lookout for the perfect data set for demonstration and testing. Microsoft has done a...
2020-08-17 (first published: 2020-08-06)
651 reads
Reusing a Recordset in an SSIS Object Variable
A few years back, I wrote a blog post about using an SSIS object variable as a data flow source. In that post, I described how you could load...
2020-07-30
228 reads
The What, Why, When, and How of Incremental Loads
When moving data in an extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) process, the most efficient design pattern is to touch only the data you must, copying just the data that...
2020-08-05 (first published: 2020-07-23)
556 reads
Comparing SSIS and Azure Data Factory
For the better part of 15 years, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been the go-to enterprise extract-transform-load (ETL) tool for shops running on Microsoft SQL Server. More recently,...
2020-07-28 (first published: 2020-07-16)
718 reads
The SSIS Catalog: Install, Manage, Secure, and Monitor your Enterprise ETL Infrastructure
I’m happy to announce the publication of my latest book. The SSIS Catalog: Install, Manage, Secure, and Monitor your Enterprise ETL Infrastructure is now available on Amazon in both...
2020-07-13
42 reads
SSIS Parameters
SSIS parameters help to ease the process of passing runtime values to SSIS packages. For values that can change over time, using parameters in SSIS is an ideal means...
2020-07-14 (first published: 2020-07-02)
477 reads
Secure Your Data Prep Area
I’ve been building ETL processes for many years, and I’ve learned two universal truths: data preparation is messy, and you must always secure your data prep area. A data...
2020-06-18
2 reads
Blogs
SQL Blunders: Stop Writing These Pointless Queries & Write Smarter!
They run, they return data. So what? Some SQL queries just waste your time...
Copilot Outside of SSMS Seems to Work
By Steve Jones
I read Brent’s first look at SSMS and Copilot in there. He didn’t have...
A New Word: Falesia
By Steve Jones
falesia– n. the disquieting awareness that someone’s importance to you and your importance to...
Forums
Question about updating statistics
We have very large tables in our database, some even more 1 B records,...
What tool or tools do people like for monitoring SQL servers?
I have a few tools at my disposal but none of them seems like...
Question of the Day
A Basic Data API Builder ADD
What parameters are required for the dab add command in the Data API Builder?
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