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.
A fantastic white paper just released: Microsoft EDW Architecture, Guidance and Deployment Best Practices. It’s a must read if you are a data architect, data developer, or DBA involved in an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). As the paper says, the … Continue reading →
While there is no way to use a source control system such as Team Foundation Server (TFS) or Subversion with PerformancePoint 2010, all is not lost. You can use the version control in SharePoint as your source control since all PerformancePoint … Continue reading →
A Windows 8 demo was just released. Looks really cool. Check it out at Previewing ‘Windows 8’ as well as Microsoft’s Windows 8 Demo From D9 (Video) and Windows 8 partner demo. If you just want screen shots, check out this … Continue reading →
One item on my PerformancePoint wish list is the ability to change a datasource for an Analytic Chart/Grid. There is no way to do this. Instead you must create a new datasource and build the Analytic Charts/Grids from scratch using the new … Continue reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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. We have repurposed … Continue reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
There are three job boards that I use: Dice, Monster, and LinkedIn. I prefer Dice by far, since it has a ton of IT jobs on it, and it is focused solely on IT. Monster is OK, but it does … Continue reading →
I see this issue pop up every now and then: A developer creates an SSIS package in BIDS and gets it to run fine. Then the developer connects to Integration Services and uploads the package to the server, and then … Continue reading →
As I mentioned in my first post, I thought it would be real difficult to think of things to blog about. Turns out to be real easy. It’s just a matter of always having a “blogging mindset”. In other words, … Continue reading →
So my sister called me the other day to tell me she has a message on her laptop that said she has a virus. Those of us working in the IT industry know we are the one’s all our friends … Continue reading →
In creating this blog, I was thinking about using some catchy name for myself. Something with “DBA” in it. However, doing a quick Google search revealed there are so many already: Cranky DBA, Rambling DBA, Goal Keeping DBA, Mean Old … Continue reading →
Hello World. Stardate 1513.1. After reading that, if you know what I am referring to, you are a tech-head and may continue to read this blog 🙂 So, the reasons that I am blogging: 1) I really enjoy helping others. … Continue reading →