Woo hoo! Congratulations Steve, SSC, and the SQL Server community!!!

:{> Andy

This sounds like fair practice... if and only if every time someone does something that saves the company a person-year the company writes them a check equivalent to one year's...

Hi Tony,

I agree. More information on expenditure justification is needed, and the skills are transferrable to othe arenas of professional life.

:{> Andy

Enterprise metadata is important. Unfortunately, you learn that (or you will) when something goes wrong. I wrote about using SSIS to collect enterprise metadata at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andy_leonard/archive/2008/08/28/ssis-design-pattern-collect-enterprise-sql-server-database-metadata-with-ssis.aspx. That article was prompted...

Hi dbdeli,

Since you're checking for a Null and all columns returned will be Null for a new row (a row where the Left Outer Join fails to...

pleasehelpme,

I hope I made it clear in the article that this is a demonstration of principle and not production-ready code.

There's a bunch of other...

Hi dbdeli,

Using your example, you should define the lookup to join on all four columns of your composite key columns in the correlation step. This is the...

Good editorial Steve. Happy New Year!

I agree there's no substitute for a skilled human. I disagree about poor documentation being better than none. It's the bad-beer-and-pizza rule for me: It...

Good editorial Steve, and funny bloopers!

Merry Christmas!

o Andy

Hi Phil,

Amen.

:{> Andy

Lynn Pettis (12/16/2008)

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Andy,

I must be one of your exceptions. As a DBA and a Developer I view change as inevitable, and therefore I usually embrace change but not for...

Happy Birthday, Wayne!

:{> Andy

In my experience, database adminstrators view change as "bad". This is not a complaint or value judgment - it is merely an observation. I think DBAs have valid reasons for...

Hi Mark,

I've witnessed similar behavior. Although I don't know why it happens, I've seen child packages open and not appear to run until the next child package...

Agreed Steve.

The field is changing, not re-inventing itself. In this economy it's natural to worry about a job. At this time, I see no end to the need for qualified...