Monthly Archives: May 2011

How to become an expert in your field

Posted on May 30, 2011 by

I have been compiling a list of what things a person can do to become an expert, or guru, in his chosen field, whether that be in specific fields like SQL Server, BI, .Net, or in a broad field like career … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Intelligence, Career, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Comment

Search Active Directory (AD) from your desktop

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

Ever see a Windows group and want to know all the users in that group without having to ask your system admin?  There is an easy way to do this.  Just create this shortcut on your desktop: %SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\rundll32.exe dsquery,OpenQueryWindow Call … Continue reading →

Posted in Active Directory, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Comment

ABL: Always Be Learning

Posted on May 25, 2011 by

If you have been in the IT field for any length of time, I’m sure you have heard the phrase “Always Be Learning”.  If you want to be successful and make the big bucks, you are going to have to … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Comment

Show correct totals when using SSAS role security

Posted on May 23, 2011 by

When using role security in SSAS, one point of confusion is when a person sees the grand total for a measure that includes the total of ALL members in the cube, even though the security has limited the members that person can … Continue reading →

Posted in Security, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSAS | 6 Comments

Watch out, Visual Studio 2010 does not support BI

Posted on May 20, 2011 by

When Visual Studio 2010 was released about a year ago, I was very excited and wanted to quickly open up a SSAS project created in VS 2008 to see the new features that were available in VS 2010.  So I copied … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Intelligence, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010 | 2 Comments

New Microsoft BI Labs site

Posted on May 18, 2011 by

Interesting new BI site from Microsoft called “BI Labs“.  This site says: “BI Labs is a collection of experimental business intelligence projects and useful applications made available from internal sources across Microsoft. These projects are prototypes and concepts, and there are … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Intelligence, Microsoft, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a comment

DBA’s, want to earn the big bucks? Learn BI

Posted on May 16, 2011 by

While there are many DBA’s who do business intelligence, or BI, I believe there are even more who do not.  After all, there is enough tasks for DBA’s to keep them plenty busy without dealing with BI.  But if you … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Intelligence, Career, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a comment

SSAS error when processing the cube

Posted on May 13, 2011 by

Every couple of weeks I see this SSAS error when processing one of my cubes: Internal error: Invalid enumeration value. Please call customer support! is not a valid value for this element. An error occurred while parsing the ‘StorageMode’ element at … Continue reading →

Posted in SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication, SSAS | 5 Comments

Dirty looking SQL, MDX, or DAX? Clean it up

Posted on May 11, 2011 by

A quick tip for you:  Ever get some SQL or MDX sent to you in an email, or copied from a website, or pulled from SQL Profiler, that is difficult to understand because it’s not formatted?  Well, there are a couple … Continue reading →

Posted in DAX, MDX, Quick Tip, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication | 1 Comment

A quicker way than using count(*)

Posted on May 9, 2011 by

A quick little tip I found a couple of years ago. Ever use the count(*) syntax and it takes forever to count all the rows in a table? I had this problem when I would sometimes run counts on a … Continue reading →

Posted in Quick Tip, SQL Server, SQLServerPedia Syndication | Leave a comment