Andy Leonard is CSO of Linchpin People and SQLPeople, an SSIS Trainer, Consultant, and developer; SQL Server database and data warehouse developer, community mentor, engineer, and farmer. He is a co-author of SQL Server 2012 Integration Services Design Patterns. His background includes web application architecture and development, VB, and ASP. Andy loves the SQL Server Community!

December 2007 - Posts

• SSIS Design Pattern - ETL Instrumentation, Part 4

  Introduction This post is part of a series of posts on ETL Instrumentation. In Part 1 we built a database to hold collected SSIS run time metrics and an SSIS package to deomnstrate how and why we would load metrics into the database. In Part 2 we expanded Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 26, 2007 3:50 AM by andyleonard | 4 Comments Filed under: Design Pattern, ETL, ETL Instrumentation, measurement, SSIS

• Utilities: SnagIt!

  SnagIt is one of the coolest screen-capture utilities on the market today. Yes, you can use PrintScreen to copy the contents of the current screen to the clipboard, paste into Paint or another image editing application, crop, and save as your favorite Read More... Posted Saturday, December 22, 2007 3:23 AM by andyleonard | 3 Comments

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools Released!

  Microsoft announces the release of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools ! From the website: Team Foundation Server Power Tools includes the following tools: Team Foundation Power Tool command-line tool (TFPT.EXE) Build Notification Read More... Posted Friday, December 21, 2007 11:27 PM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: Agile, Database Developer, utilities, Visual Studio 2008

• Utilities: RML Utilities from PSS

  The SQL Server PSS group announces the release of RML Utilities . From the blog post: The Microsoft SQL Server support team uses several internally-written utilities to make it easier to work on a typical customer support case. These utilities may also Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:01 PM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: measurement, SQL Server, utilities

• SSIS Third-Party Components: CozyRoc

  CozyRoc has a suite of Control Flow Tasks that are worth a look. We're using the SFTP (Secure FTP) and SSH Connection Manager on my current project. Once we identified the need for SFTP, I looked around and identified a couple companies / products. The Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007 6:46 AM by andyleonard | 4 Comments Filed under: Components, Custom Tasks, SSIS

• Utilities: SourceGear's DiffMerge

  I like SourceGear. I like what I know about the company, the people, and their products - mostly the people. SourceGear DiffMerge is helping me this morning. I created an FTP class in an SSIS Script Task from code I found online because... well, that's Read More... Posted Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:25 AM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: database developers, SSIS

• SQL Nexus, SQLDiag, Retrace Information

  Ken Henderson blogs about some cool new utilities / tools for SQL Server: SQL Nexus , SQLDiag , and Retrace ! :{> Andy Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 12, 2007 4:35 PM by andyleonard | 1 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, Support

• Installing Virtual Server On Vista Ultimate 64-bit

  Mea... This may be a little off-topic. I use Virtual Server and Virtual PC a lot for things like testing beta and CTP releases of SQL Server. I don't have time or the inclination to reformat physical hard drives, load an OS, or even fiddle with restoring Read More... Posted Saturday, December 08, 2007 12:07 PM by andyleonard | 12 Comments Filed under: Database Testing, Developer Community, SQL Server

• "Yes Virginia, There Is A PDC 2008"

  http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc :{> Andy Read More... Posted Thursday, December 06, 2007 2:25 PM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: Database Developer, Developer Community, Visual Studio

• What's That Ticking Sound?

  Microsoft SQL Server 2000 SP4 mainstream support ends 8 April 2008 and - as of the datetime of this post - they are sticking with that date . That's 4 months and 3 days from today. There are still a lot of SQL Server 2000 instances out there... :{> Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 05, 2007 5:22 PM by andyleonard | 1 Comments Filed under: SQL Server, Support

• SSRS 2008 Is IIS-Free

  Microsoft has severed the IIS dependency for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) in the 2008 version, according to a couple sources . Reasons cited include : Deployment considerations (some enterprises prohibit IIS on database servers). Better configuration. Read More... Posted Wednesday, December 05, 2007 10:09 AM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: Reporting Services, SQL Server 2008

• Learning LINQ-to-SQL

  Microsoft released a couple free Hands-On Labs to teach users about LINQ in Visual Studio 2008. Robert Shelton blogs about them here . :{> Andy Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 04, 2007 9:55 AM by andyleonard | 0 Comments Filed under: LINQ, Visual Studio 2008