PowerPivot
A new direction in BI, with a new flagship interface for Business Intelligence from Microsoft. Steve Jones talks a little about the back story he heard from Microsoft.
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Design Best Practices
In the previous tips (SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Best Practices - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) of this series I briefly talked about SSIS and few of the best practices to consider while designing SSIS packages. Continuing on this path I am going to discuss some more best practices of SSIS package design, how you can use lookup transformations and what considerations you need to take, the impact of implicit type cast in SSIS, changes in SSIS 2008 internal system tables and stored procedures and finally some general guidelines.
TSQL Challenge 19 - Working with consolidated calculations on hierarchical structures
This challenge involves generating an organizational hierarchy and calculating the total orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates. It involves a number of challenges such as generating a resultset in the correct hierarchical form, calculating the orders created by each employee and his/her subordinates and finally calculating the total orders created by self and all the subordinates.
What SQL Statements Are Currently Executing?
This article describes a utility that allows you to identify what SQL statements are currently executing.
Comparing cursor vs. WHILE loop performance in SQL Server 2008
There are situations in which you need to individually handle each row in a result set. SQL Server 2008 provides a minimal set of tools — cursors and WHILE loops — to accomplish this task. I'll take a closer look at each option and explain why it's difficult to pinpoint which is better in terms of performance.
Fundamentals of Storage Systems – Disk Controllers, Host Bus Adapters, and Interfaces
We have covered the Hard Disk and the System Bus. This time around we will cover disk controllers and host...
SQL Azure with ASP Dot Net
Don Schlichting demonstrates the development of a SQL Azure ASP Dot Net application, leveraging our existing TSQL and Dot Net skills.
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!
A guest editorial from Andy Warren today looks to inspire you with a few thoughts about how you might force yourself to grow a little next year.
SSIS Package Credentials
What do you do when you run an SSIS package and it works, but it fails when scheduled? You might have a credential problem. Robert Pearl brings us a solution to a cryptic message that prevents you from scheduling a package.
Profiling SSIS packages for component level change tracking
In this tip we will look at an add-in that helps you better identify changes between two versions of an SSIS package.
Blogs
A New Word: Dolorblindness
By Steve Jones
dolorblindness – n. the frustration that you’ll never be able to understand another person’s...
Claude Code Helps Analyze Test Data Manager Log Files
By Steve Jones
I had a customer ask about analyzing their Test Data Manager (TDM) usage to...
PowerPoint to HTML with Claude AI
By Steve Jones
I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...
Forums
Optimism Without Illusion or Why AI Needs Blunt Technologists
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optimism Without Illusion or Why...
SSIS with VS2022 64/32 issue with Excel files
Hi all, I'm trying to do classic scenario for loading multiple Excel files into...
Case part is sloooooow
Hi So the case statement is slowing this down - but for the life...
Question of the Day
The String Distance I
In SQL Server 2025, what is returned by this code:
SELECT EDIT_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
Assume preview features are enabled. See possible answers