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.
In SSAS, data structures do not always conform to the snowflake or star schema model where one fact is associated with a single dimension member. For example, consider the example of financial transactions in accounts that can have one or … Continue reading →
Parallel execution in SSIS improves performance on computers that have multiple physical or logical processors. To support parallel execution of different tasks in a package, SSIS uses two properties: MaxConcurrentExecutables and EngineThreads. If you are like me, you probably did not … Continue reading →
If you have been creating SSIS packages in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) for any length of time, you have likely noticed that SSIS packages run slower in BIDS as opposed to running them in a SQL Server agent job … Continue reading →
As a follow-up to my post SQL Server “Denali”: New Certifications, the seven exams for SQL Server 2012 are: Querying Microsoft SQL Server (70-461) [BI and DBA] (info) (course) Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases (70-462) [DBA] (info) Developing Microsoft … Continue reading →
A few weeks ago I asked a colleague, who is a DBA, if he was going to the SQL PASS Summit. He had no idea what PASS was. It then occurred to me that there are probably thousands of DBAs, BI … Continue reading →
Are you a salaried employee looking to switch to a W-2 or 1099 contractor? (For an explanation of W-2 and 1099, click Consultants: 1099 or W-2?) If so, what hourly pay rate would you need to at least match your … Continue reading →
All the videos for this popular conference are online or will be soon (48 of them). Take a look at the recorded sessions at http://sqlbits.com/content/Event9. All are free to watch! The one’s on my list to watch (because I’m interested in SQL Server … Continue reading →
Another must read white-paper: Analysis Services 2008 R2 Performance Guide. This white paper describes how business intelligence developers can apply query and processing performance-tuning techniques to their Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services OLAP solutions. It applies to SQL Server … Continue reading →
As you may know, the TechEd in the U.S. is not the only one. There have been many all over the world, and it 2011 there have been one’s in New Zealand, Australia, and next month in Russia. The Australia and New … Continue reading →
Technology Adoption Program (TAP) and Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) are ways for Microsoft to get early feedback on new products or product updates as well as give important customers a heads-up on what Microsoft is up to. Participation is by … Continue reading →
This is my biggest gripe with SSIS: I have a data flow task, and within that I’m pulling data from multiple sources into multiple destinations, with a few performing data flow transformations. While testing, I want to disable some of … Continue reading →
Microsoft and HP have announced another appliance, called the Database Consolidation Appliance (DBC) (see my blog about the other two appliances). In short, this appliance consolidates databases into a single, virtual environment. In more detail: Many customers continue to struggle with … Continue reading →
Over the past few years I have developed a list of ways to improve performance in SSAS and in two of the tools that use it: ProClarity and PerformancePoint. Below are those performance tips along with other important items to be … Continue reading →
In SSAS, to improve query performance, it’s important to understand what happens inside analysis services when a query is run. Analysis Services is made up of two engines: Formula Engine (FE) – It is single-threaded. It processes the MDX queries, determines what data is needed … Continue reading →
Some announcements and notes from SQL PASS Summit 2011, going on this week: It was announced that the official name of the SQL Server “Denali” product is SQL Server 2012 and will be released in the first half of the year 2012. There … Continue reading →
In SSAS, there is an Error Configuration object that is central to the management of data integrity errors. The following picture shows the ErrorConfiguration properties for a cube: There are numerous objects where you can specify the error configuration via … Continue reading →
Here is a quick example of when using temporary tables will give you a big performance gain. I recently was given this query to improve, as it was taking over 15 hours to run: SELECT * FROM ( SELECT * … Continue reading →
When building a SSAS cube, you typically have a star schema containing dimension tables and fact tables. For dimension tables, you generally model these as one table per object. Building the dimension in the ETL system involves joining the various … Continue reading →
If you are the decision maker in your company and you are tasked with purchasing one or more servers to be used solely for SQL Server and solely as a data warehouse, be aware there are options outside of the usual … Continue reading →
In our day-to-day activities, browsing the web is one of the most important aspects of our job. Whether researching for an answer to a problem, reading our favorite blogs, checking LinkedIn, or using a web application, it’s used so much … Continue reading →