Blog Posts

I’m mentally preparing myself for a whole slew of upcoming conferences / speaking engagements over the next month and a half. I love talking about SQL Server technologies, and I’m honored that I’ll have so many chances to do it in the next few weeks! Please come see me at one (or more) of the … Continued

Yes, yes you can. Scripted or automated deployment can be done in a number of ways in SQL Server 2012. Integration Services Deployment Wizard Yes, this is the primary UI tool for SSIS project deployment, but it can also be run silently on the command line. When you run through the wizard, the Review page … Continued

I put this together for an SSIS performance presentation I did a while ago, and thought it warranted its own post. In addition to looking for appropriate Design Patterns, I have a checklist of things to look for when trying to optimize an SSIS Data Flow. This list is by no means extensive, but it … Continued

Andy Leonard will be joining me to present a Developing Extensions for SSIS webcast on May 22nd. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to present a code heavy session like this, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be using this session as a dry run for a talk I’ll … Continued

Background I’m not sure when it started, but for a while now I’ve found it hard to just sit and watch TV or a movie with my family. I feel like it doesn’t occupy my mind enough, and I need to be doing something else at the same time. My Surface has come in really … Continued

Similar to localizing a task, you can localize the display name and description of a custom connection manager by setting the LocalizationType property of the DtsConnection attribute. SSIS will look for two properties on the class: ConnectionDescription ConnectionDisplayName These must be public, static string properties on your LocalizationType class. The code looks like this:

I’m honored to be invited back to this year’s SQL Saturday Dublin event. I must have done a decent job last year on my SSIS Design Patterns pre-conference session, because I’ve been asked to do another one this time around as part of their Training Day (June 21st). This year I’ll be doing a full … Continued

This blog uses WordPress, and I recently started using the Jetpack plugin. One of the features that Jetpack provides is a list of search terms that people used to arrive at your site. It doesn’t account for all views for your site (or even the majority of them), but it is interesting to see what … Continued

Question: How do I make sure everyone at my company is using the same SSIS framework and design patterns? SSIS Design Patterns and frameworks are one of my favorite things to talk (and write) about. A recent search on SSIS frameworks highlighted just how many different frameworks there are out there, and making sure that … Continued

The fine folks over at Communauté .NET Montréal have invited me to speak at their meeting on May 27th, 2013. I’ll be using this as a practice run for my sessions at the DevTeach Toronto event later that week. Come join us at the Microsoft Montreal office if you’re interested in finding out more about: … Continued

Data Explorer is a great new add-on for Excel. It provides a simple interface over a power data transformation engine (powered by M), and it has become my tool of choice anytime I need to get data into Excel. In this post I show how you can use Data Explorer to do some initial data … Continued

Issue – you run an SSIS package that uses an Excel Source or Excel Destination and get the following error: [Connection manager "Excel Connection Manager"] Error: SSIS Error Code DTS_E_OLEDBERROR. An OLE DB error has occurred. Error code: 0×80004005. An OLE DB record is available. Source: "Microsoft Access Database Engine" Hresult: 0×80004005 Description: "The Microsoft … Continued

Question: When we run SSIS in development (from SSDT/BIDS), we can see the progress of the job, with all of the steps highlighted in yellow, red or green. Is there a way to display this same status information when the packages run in production? You have a number of options when it comes to monitoring … Continued

Did you hear that SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence (formerly known as BIDS) has been releases for Visual Studio 2012? It was announced last month, and we’ve seen a lot of downloads so far. The download adds support for the SQL Server 2012 BI projects (Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and Integration Services) to … Continued

Are you loading data from an Excel workbook with external queries using SSIS? Do you want to make sure those queries are refreshed before the load takes place? Have I got the post for you! I recently had to do this myself, and after some googling with Bing, I found an MSDN forum post that … Continued

I recently stumbled upon CANSIM – Canada’s equivalent of Data.Gov. The site has a lot of really interesting datasets that come in handy if you’re someone who frequently creates data focused demos. I wanted to play around a bit more with Data Visualizations in Excel (specifically, the Scatter Chart over Time feature in Power View), … Continued

Did you know that support for OUTPUT parameters was added to the OLE DB Source in SSIS 2012? So many features were added in 2012, this one is often overlooked. (I had completely forgotten about it until someone asked the other day…). This post has a quick walkthrough of how to use them. For this … Continued

The slides from my 3rd presentation at the TechDays Hong Kong event are now available. As I mentioned during the talk, design patterns are one of my favorite topics, and something I really enjoyed writing about. This presentation had a subset of the SSIS Performance Design patterns in the full day training sessions I’ve done … Continued