A Day of SSIS in May

andyleonard — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Introduction

I could run through the abstract for my submission to the SQLRally pre-con - and I will include much of it in this post.

But Wait There's More!

It's difficult to convey in writing my passion for SQL Server Integration Services. I like the platform - a lot. I love sharing SSIS with others for a bunch of reasons; chief among them is I had a difficult time learning SSIS and want to help as many people as possible over the hurdles that I experienced.

It's why I took vacation time in October to train people in Boston and why I'm taking more vacation time in December to do the same. I love delivering SSIS training! Nothing thrills me like seeing the lights come on or hearing a student say "So that's how you do that in SSIS!" I don't claim to be an expert - I claim to be experienced. But that's separate and distinct from a passion for ETL and SSIS.

Is SSIS perfect? Nope. But it's better than most people think. The chief complaint about SSIS is: It's difficult to learn. And that's a fair complaint - SSIS is not easy. But it is possible to learn SSIS. I know. I've trained hundreds of SSIS developers.

You can learn more about SSIS at A Day of SSIS, but first you have to vote here. My friend Joel Cochran (Blog | @JoelCochran) hired me for a day this summer to help him learn SSIS (and do some database design). You can read more about his experiences here and here.

Abstract

Get pragmatic advice for developing, maintaining, and managing SSIS in your enterprise. With a focus on developing SSIS packages with maintenance and management in mind, this day-long session covers SSIS Design Patterns for efficiently loading data, developing a centralized custom logging solution, and developing a metadata-driven SSIS package execution solution. Then, Andy demonstrates how to use this suite of applications to perform predictive analytics and continuously improve your SSIS ecosystem.

Take-Home Skills

Incremental Load SSIS Design Patterns
Metadata-driven SSIS Package Execution solution
Centralized custom logging solution
Log Analysis for Predictive Analytics
Log Analysis for Continuous Improvement

Conclusion

There are lots of good candidates for SQLRally pre-conferences. I urge you to make your selections known by voting. I hope to see you in Orlando in May for A Day of SSIS!

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SQLRally Pre-Conference Voting Is Open!

andyleonard — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:00:00 GMT

SQLRally

The SQLRally team has been working overtime and you can now vote on the pre-conference session you'd most like to see. What a great idea. This is a much better way to select pre-cons. This way, the SQL Server Community wins.

I submitted a pre-conference session called A Day of SSIS. You can cast your vote here.

A Day of SSIS

My session isn't a survey of the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack that hops around from topic to topic; this is a deep dive into pragmatic SSIS design, development, management, and maintenance. If you want to focus on SSIS, I encourage you to vote for and then attend my session. I share from my experiences as a one-developer shop building SSIS packages as a consultant, but I've also led a team of over 20 SSIS developers for two years. If you're the lone-gun SSIS developer, I share best practices for building and maintaining SSIS... been there and done that. If you're part of a team of developers, I feel your pain - and share in this session ways to develop SSIS that address many enterprise concerns from SDLC to source control to performance management.

You don't have to worry about me selling stuff; I am here to help. My day job keeps me plenty busy and I have no product or service other than SSIS training to promote.

Conclusion

There are two other good Business Intelligence sessions out there for you to consider. You get to select which sessions you'd like to see. I like this a lot! Like I said, this way the SQL Server Community wins.

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Search results matching tags 'SSIS', 'SQLRally', and 'ETL'

A Day of SSIS in May

SQLRally Pre-Conference Voting Is Open!