James works at Microsoft as a big data and data warehousing solution architect where he has been for most of the last eleven years. Before that he was an independent consultant working as a Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence architect and developer. He is a prior SQL Server MVP with over 40 years of IT experience. Check out his book Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh.
Version 2 of PowerPivot (download) is being made available with SQL Server 2012. There are many new features, and my top 5 are: Diagram View – Instead of looking at the defined relationships in a list format, v2 allows you to view the … Continue reading →
Microsoft StreamInsight, first introduced in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, is a way to effectively analyze large amounts of event data streaming in from multiple sources. You can derive insights from critical information in near real-time. StreamInsight is a platform … Continue reading →
SQL Server 2012 has a number of new T-SQL features. Listed below are all of the new features, along with the best links I have found that describe each feature: WITH RESULT SETS, OFFSET AND FETCH, THROW, SEQUENCE: See New T-SQL … Continue reading →
A problem that has plagued SQL Server for a long time is that a database is not very portable. Sure, you can backup or detach a database and restore or attach it elsewhere, but when you do that, you are … Continue reading →
SQL Azure is a cloud-based service from Microsoft that uses a special version of SQL Server as its backend. SQL Azure helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any … Continue reading →
Microsoft Connect (blog, twitter) is a site where you can post feedback to improve the quality of many Microsoft products and impact the direction of those products. As of this writing, the site accepts bugs for 51 products and suggestions for 34 … Continue reading →
Data Quality Services (DQS) is a brand new feature in SQL Server 2012. In short, DQS enables you to build a knowledge base, and use that knowledge base to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks such as correction, enrichment, … Continue reading →
When designing a data warehouse, how you handle changes to dimensional data over time is the most important decision to make. It is rare that a dimension will remain static over time. For example, a customer may change their phone number or … Continue reading →
Ok, I know that creating a time dimension down to the millisecond is extremely rare. After all, we are talking about 86,400,000 records. In my case, it is needed for a customer with a 50TB database that contains stock trades that … Continue reading →
While using a cube in SSAS is usually a great source for reporting, it is not always the best choice. Sometimes it is better to report off of the data warehouse that the cube is built from. For example, say … Continue reading →
Here is a situation I ran into recently concerning using a fact table in SSAS. This experience may help you out if you run into something similar: A data warehouse has an advertising table that has these four fields: Product Type, Inches, … Continue reading →
As your SSAS cube gets bigger, cube processing time will become a problem. This is especially true as more and more companies want cube processing during the day instead of the usual off-hours time when no one is using the … Continue reading →
I get 15-30 calls/emails a week from recruiters (not counting the dozens of auto-generated emails I get). Being a contractor I’m always trying to build relationships with recruiters so when my contract nears an end, I have plenty of job … Continue reading →
If you are interested in viewing the recorded sessions for the PASS Summit 2011, you can order the DVD. You can purchase the Regular Summit Sessions as well as the Pre-Conference Sessions. However, if you are interested in the sessions … Continue reading →
There are some FANTASTIC videos of the sessions from SQLInspire New York 2011. I highly recommend that you check out all the videos, as I found some great career tips in all of them. As the site says “We’ve lined up … Continue reading →
In previous SSIS versions as the developer you were responsible for configuring all of your logging options, such as what events you were going to log, which containers you were going to collect logs for, and where you were going … Continue reading →
I have been fortunate the past few months to be working on a HP ProLiant DL980 G7 Server. This is one killer server: 8 processors, 80 cores, 160 virtual processors, and 2 TB’s of memory. Oh, and there are two … Continue reading →
Since I work mostly from home, video/voice conferencing and IM are of major importance to me, and using the right tools is vital to keeping me productive. The tools used for conferencing should have IM, presence indicator, voice and video … Continue reading →
Thanks for everyone who attended my presentation “How To Make a LOT More Money as a Consultant” at HASSUG. Here is the PowerPoint presentation: How To Make a LOT More Money as a Consultant How to make a LOT more money … Continue reading →
When building a data warehouse, it is important that primary keys of dimension tables remain stable. To accomplish this, it is strongly recommended that surrogate keys be created and used for primary keys for all dimension tables instead of using … Continue reading →