Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have published a list of job-market hotspots, and in the top ten is Data Mining and Analytics. The study is based on enrollment figures, national employment statistics and interviews with San Diego business … Continue reading →
Microsoft has just released a new SSIS transform, called the SSIS Balanced Data Distributor (BDD). You can download it here. UPDATE: The BDD has been released for SQL Server 2012 (download). See Balanced Data Distributor (BDD) for SQL Server 2012 … Continue reading →
Check out What’s New in PerformancePoint Services and SP1? to see a list of the major features and updates included in SP1 for PPS. Note that SP1 is an Office 2010 service pack, and it’s due at the end of this month. … Continue reading →
A Fuzzy Lookup Task in SSIS that I was working on was bombing out, and I had a heck of a time figuring out why. The error did not tell me much: Error: 2011-05-18 10:42:09.33 Code: 0xC0047022 Source: Fuzzy Match … Continue reading →
Ever get a timeout error when using the “View History” for a SQL Server Agent job? I find this happens when you have a lot of rows of job history and/or the SQL Server box is getting hit hard. So, … Continue reading →
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 →