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.
Over the years, I have accumulated a set of questions that I usually ask the placement firm about a contract or consulting position (W2 or 1099) that I am looking at taking. Many of these questions will also apply if … Continue reading →
Because the relationship between application development and the IT operations teams is critical, Microsoft has released a CTP of a new connector between System Center and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 that helps the coordination between development and operations. The connector … Continue reading →
This is a quick tip to help quickly solve a problem I run into sometimes, and now that I am writing a blog about it, will be able to solve it in no time (a big benefit of blogging is to never … Continue reading →
A couple of times over the past few months, while in Visual Studio 2008 working on an SSIS package, I went to the toolbox and saw this message: There we no tools at all showing up. Apparently the toolbox became corrupted, but … Continue reading →
When doing ETL, you have the choice of using T-SQL or SSIS. What things should you consider when deciding which one to use? Here are some of the major design considerations to think about. These points were derived from Tim … Continue reading →
Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), formally called by its code name “Project Madison”, is an edition of Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 that was released in December 2010. PDW is Microsoft’s reworking of the DatAllegro Inc. massive parallel processing (MPP) product … Continue reading →
This is a bit off-topic, but I wanted to mention a great tool for beginners to learn how to program. This tool is especially ideal for those of us who have high schoolers who are interested in programming (this blog … Continue reading →
On a few occasions, I have opened up my PerformancePoint scorecard on SharePoint to see an error staring at me: So two of my KPI’s, which have been working fine for months, suddenly don’t work. Follow along and I will … Continue reading →
Source tables change over time. A data mart or data warehouse that is based on those tables needs to reflect these changes. This blog post will explain different solutions for solving this problem. When moving data into a data warehouse, taking … Continue reading →
Microsoft SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service that is part of the recently released Microsoft Office 365. For those of us who have installed SharePoint and maintained it, we know there is a lot of cost and overhead. Setting it all … Continue reading →
If you are using a SSIS lookup transformation editor to determine whether to update/delete/insert records and the reference dataset is large (millions of rows) and you are using “Full cache” on the lookup transformation (the default), you might run into … Continue reading →
There is a very interesting new Microsoft program that started back in January, called the SSAS Maestro Program. It is a five-day, deep-dive course on Analysis Services 2008 R2 that gives architects and consultants the education and hands-on experience needed to deliver the … Continue reading →
Released today, the SQL Server 2012, code name ‘Denali’, Community Technical Preview 3 (CTP3) Product Guide download contains the latest datasheets, white papers, click-through and auto-running demonstrations, hands-on lab previews, technical presentations, and other useful links to help you evaluate the SQL … Continue reading →
Replaying multiple threads of a captured trace in SQL Profiler is difficult, and you are limited to replaying the workload from a single computer. Distributed Replay is a new multi-threaded replay utility in Denali that solves this problem by allowing you … Continue reading →
For those of you who use MDX, I’m sure you share my opinion that MDX is a lot harder to master than SQL. One trick I have learned is that instead of trying to write MDX from scratch, use one … Continue reading →
I take it for granted that everyone knows all about Microsoft certifications and Microsoft MVP’s. But a few years ago, I had no idea what they were. I had seen a few people list Microsoft certifications on their résumé, but … Continue reading →
As a consultant or contractor, many times the client we are at does not provide us with a laptop, so we must use our own. Usually that is preferred anyway, as we have all the software and tools installed and … Continue reading →
Project Apollo is a new feature in CTP3 of SQL Server 2012 (code name of “Denali”) that enables a new columnstore index that offers 10-100x performance improvements for a star join or similar query. Apollo brings together the in-memory columnstore … Continue reading →
Here is a tip that could make you much more productive: At home, I have a desktop computer with dual-monitors (via a HDMI connection and a DVI connection with 1920×1080 resolution. One monitor is 24-inch, the other 21-inch). I also have … Continue reading →
Here is a got-ya that happened to me. In SQL Server I want to generate a script of all the tables in case I need to re-create them. This is usually the case in a development environment when I’m building … Continue reading →