|
|
|
|
Latest Blog Posts
-
|
It’s important for a consultant to be able jump into a situation and quickly evaluate and assess the dynamics involved, in order to serve the client efficiently and effectively and economically. While a lot of people dislike military metaphors, there...
|
-
|
“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” ― Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland The idea to organize SQL Saturday is so exiting and scary at the same time. For me - this is my first SQL Saturday. For SQL Saturday...
|
-
|
Moving On After nearly nine years at Microsoft, I’ve chosen to move on. I’ve accepted a position at Fusion-io —now a SanDisk company—as Worldwide SQL Server Solutions Architect where I’ll be evangelizing, documenting best practices, collaborating directly...
|
-
|
One important thing about which to be self-aware is how you interpret communication. Communication is a two-phase commit. The first part lies with the person communicating. She has an idea she wishes to communicate, and she communicates it – in writing...
|
-
|
I’m always telling people that the thing I love about BI projects is that they tend to appeal to the people who pay the bills. This is a good place to be doing project work. When I look at large companies like Amazon, I can imagine that the people who...
|
-
|
I was just starting to work on a post on column statistics, using one of my favorite metadata functions: sys.dm_db_stats_properties(), when I realized something was missing. The function requires a stats_id value, which is available from sys.stats. However,...
|
-
|
SQL 2012 was a big release for working out the median in SQL Server, with the advent of the function PERCENTILE_CONT() . It’s a very elegant way of working out the median (hint, that’s the 0.5 point), even though it’s not actually an aggregate function...
|
-
|
Yesterday I have noticed that the log file for one of the user databases grew much bigger than it should have been. First of all, I went to check the sys.databases catalog view. The reason for the log growth appeared to be an Active Transaction which...
|
-
|
In my article titled A Custom Execution Method – Level 19 of the Stairway to Integration Services posted at SQL Server Central , I created a stored procedure to execute SSIS packages stored in the SSIS Catalog. Really, all I did was build a rudimentary...
|
-
|
Periodically people post looking for an answer to the following error message which is also shown in Figure 1. Frequently zebra diagnoses are presented as the response. In healthcare, a zebra diagnosis is when you overlook the simple and the obvious....
|
-
|
Self-awareness is an important trait. I believe it is especially important for consultants. For each of us, there is some gap between reality and what we perceive. I believe one measure of humility (or pride) is this self-awareness delta. I also believe...
|
-
|
Several customers have told me that the time it takes to back up their databases is taking longer than they are comfortable with. Others have told me their backups take a long time but they don’t mind. Whatever the case, getting things done more quickly...
|
-
|
Managing Geeks – A Journey of Leading by Doing is now available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions! Many people have expressed interest in obtaining an electronic copy of Managing Geeks. I’m sorry it took this long, but it is finally available....
|
-
|
Less than one year ago I published a pattern about ABC Classification in DAX. Such a pattern was static, so an item (e.g. customer, product) is classified statically when you process a Power Pivot or Tabular model, so filters and slicers querying data...
|
-
|
Yesterday I received the news that I was the winner of the Tribal Awards in the category of Best Free PowerShell Script . This award means a great deal to me, as it's for something I gave to the community to share both a useful tool and a way to teach...
|
-
|
A Custom Execution Method – Level 19 of the Stairway to Integration Services is live at the Stairway to Integration Services site at SQL Server Central ! Enjoy! :{>...
|
-
|
As per information from Microsoft: "It is my pleasure to announce the release of SQL Server 2012 SP2 Cumulative Update 4 on behalf of the team. SQL Server 2012 SP2 Cumulative Update 4 incorporates 42 issues. This CU will be available for download from...
|
-
|
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had to troubleshoot several technical problems that, while not critical, were extremely frustrating, annoying and inconvenient. Two of them had to do with setting up my new computer. I am now using a Microsoft Surface...
|
-
|
I’ve moved my SSISDB scripts from Gist to GitHub where I can maintain them more comfortably. So far, I’ve published 6 scripts: ssis-execution-status : Latest executed packages ssis-execution-breakdown : Execution breakdown for a specific execution ssis-execution-dataflow-info...
|
-
|
I credit my friend and brother, Chris Yates ( Blog | @YatesSQL ), for inspiring me to write this post with his (excellent) post: Reports in SSIS . If I had a nickel for each time I’ve been asked, “What permissions are required for SSIS?” I would have...
|
-
|
"The SSIS Catalog is a database and an application." - Andy Leonard, circa 2015 If there’s one thing I want you to get from this post, it’s this: The SSIS Catalog is a database and an application. While it’s a pretty cool database and application, it...
|
-
|
On the first days of February I’ll be speaking at the German SQL Konferenz 2015 in Darmstad (Frankfurt) with a lot of other friends: http://www.sqlkonferenz.de/agenda.aspx I’ll be talking about two topics that my developer side love at most : Service...
|
-
|
Last week, Microsoft released an out-of-band hotfix to resolve an issue surrounding excessive RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE_QUERY_COMPILE waits. If you are experiencing this issue, or if you are diligent about applying the most recent hotfixes, you should apply...
|
-
|
My lovely bride and I visited Paris last year for SQL Saturday 323. We stuck around a few days to do touristy stuff and we learned a lot about the history of France. While reading about an uprising in the late 1800’s, Christy stumbled upon the story of...
|
-
|
I will be presenting a full-day workshop, “Mastering Execution Plan Analysis” on Friday 15 May 2015 as part of SQL Saturday #369 in Lisbon, Portugal. Early-bird tickets are priced at just €135 and are available until 28 February 2015, when the price increases...
|
|
|
|
|
|