BIDS helper is Visual Studio add-in with features that extend and enhance the functionality of the SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 BI Development Studio. Version 1.5 can be downloaded here, and read up on the new features. It’s a must-have … Continue reading →
Virtualization is becoming a hot topic lately, and there is no doubt it provides a ton of benefits. But you don’t have to be a system admin that is virtualizing servers to take advantage of it. If you deal with computers every day … Continue reading →
Interesting video on eWeek.com called Business Intelligence Takes Higher Education Students to the Head of the Class that talks about how colleges are noticing that there is a high demand for employees with business intelligence and analytics expertise, and are now … Continue reading →
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 →