Three months ago I wrote a blog post entitled Some thoughts on Visual Studio database references and how they should be used for SQL Server BI where I shared some thoughts on a feature available to database developers in Visual Studio 2010 that I would love to see added to SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis ...

If you’re still unsure if the workshop I’ll deliver at PASS Summit the next November - “Creating a BI solution from A to Z” - is a good choice for you or not, you can get some more details reading the brief interview here: PASS Summit Post-Con Preview - Davide Mauri Where you’ll find answers to the following questions: Is there an audience ...

Over the past few weeks I have been making heavy use of the Database tools in Visual Studio 2010 (formerly known as datadude, DBPro, VSTS for Database Professionals or one of a plethora of other names that it has gone by over the past few years) and one of the features that has most impressed me has been database references.   Database ...

I’ve been using Analysis Services a lot lately in my current day job and recently encountered an issue that I believe people need to be aware of. The issue transpired to be a bug in our application rather than in Analysis Services itself but it was brought about by a misunderstanding of how Analysis Services handles uniqueness for dimension ...

New Jersey SQL Server User Group (NJSQL) is bringing SQLSaturday #39 to NYC on April 24, 2010!  The free all-day training event will be hosted by Microsoft at their Midtown Manhattan offices.  The speaker line-up is growing fast—if you'd like to present, visit the event's open call for speakers.  This is a free full-day ...

I recently submitted a bug to Microsoft Connect concerning the behaviour of the expression language in SSRS, if you’re interested you can read about it here: DateAdd() doesn't throw an error when it has invalid parameters. I got a swift and detailed reply (for which I am grateful) from a fellow on the SSRS team however the content of it wasn’t ...

This is a quickfire blog post about a feature in Analysis Services that I have learnt about recently – Dimension Cubes. As of Analysis Services 2005 every single dimension in an Analysis Server database implicitly has a dimension cube created for it. Dimension cubes enable you to get around the limitation that every MDX query must have a FROM ...

Reference dimensions let you create a relationship between a measure group and a dimension using an intermediate dimension to act as a bridge between them. In the Adventure Works demo, for example, they are used to link reseller sales and orders to the geography dimension. Now, something that is less evident is how this specific kind of ...

This post is part of a Methodology discussion - other posts will follows. I will be happy to get your feedback! I am proud to announce a public draft of the first paper about the SQLBI Methodology. I and Alberto Ferrari tried to define a consistent methodology which covers the construction of the back-end of a BI Solution using Microsoft SQL ...

I was trying to find a way to repeatedly run the same MDX CREATE GLOBAL CUBE statement 70 times, building 70 different offline cubes for sales rep type folks to carry around for a client, and I just couldn't get it. I have some experience with SSIS, mostly from writing a tutorial on how to do RSS feeds with SSIS earlier that I am not sure ...