Devin Knight

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• SSRS Commonly Required Date Expressions
  Reporting Services has many expressions that can manipulate date fields.  These expressions can be used just about anywhere in SSRS including object properties, displayed data, and parameters.  Recently I’ve worked on some projects that required date parameters to do things that you would typically see in an Analysis Services cube.  My client needed to see data brought back Week to Date, Month to date,   Year to date, and on with a rolling week.  My first suggestion of course was to create a cub...
  SSRS
  2/5/2010  by DevinKnight  Comments: 0
• Handling Escape Sequences in SSIS Expression String Literals
  The SSIS expression language is a powerful tool for a developer that gives you one method of making a package dynamic.  When writing an expression there are a few things to be careful of that could potentially cause a stumbling block while writing code.  For example, a common reason you may write expressions is to populate a changing file name.  Say you want to have a file loaded but the name of the file should change each day the SSIS package is ran to have the current date appended to the end ...
  SSIS
  1/27/2010  by DevinKnight  Comments: 3
• SSIS Checkpoints with Tasks Running in Parallel
  Several months ago I blogged about why Checkpoints are a great feature in SSIS to use.  It seems with every feature there are potential problems you can run into and it is no different with Checkpoints.  The major problem or what some people would call a feature is when Control Flow tasks are run in parallel checkpoints act a little erratically.   The obvious solution for this is to not run tasks in parallel and instead have all your tasks kick off sequentially.  Here’s an example of the problem...
  SSIS
  1/22/2010  by DevinKnight  Comments: 2
• SQL Lunch #8 recording
  If you weren't able to attend tuesday for SQL Lunch you can watch the recording now mosted on the website.  This session was on Data Driven Subscription.  We had a great group of people with lots of good questions.  Thanks to Patrick LeBlanc , founder of SQL Lunch, for letting me present.  Patrick recently wrote a blog post that answers a question that some people had about subscription names so make sure to read that.  Make sure to watch the recorded presentation and add to your calandar some o...
  SQL Lunch
  1/15/2010  by DevinKnight  Comments: 0
• Configure Report Manager to open Report Builder 2.0
  Recently while at a client I was discussing the differences between Report Builder 1.0 and Report Builder 2.0.  The discussion was really around will the end user actually use Report Builder and if they will should they have access to Report Builder 1.0, 2.0 or both.  I explained that Report Builder 2.0 had a lot more features than 1.0 and that if the end user is tech savy enough they should go that route.  So it was decided to go with Report Builder 2.0 but I explained that the Report Manager a...
  SSRS
  1/8/2010  by DevinKnight  Comments: 0
• Anaylsis Services Partitions and Aggregations PASS Session
  For a little more than a year now I've been a part of the PASS BI SIG and have tried to contribute whenever possible.  The SIG is split into several focus groups that meet on all BI topics.  I help in leading the SSIS group.  Today I actually had an opportunity to present to the Analysis Services focus group on the topics of Analysis Services Partitions and Aggregations which you can view here. If you think you would like to present on any BI topic contact me and we'll get you lined up as a spea...
  SSAS, Partitions, Aggregations
  12/18/2009  by DevinKnight  Comments: 1
• Using a SSRS Report to run SQL Agent Jobs part 2
  In part one of this post I showed how you can use a report to run SQL Server Agent Jobs by using a report.  In that post I only showed you how to run a single job but hardcoding in the job name.  Someone recently asked if it was possible to have a drop-down list of jobs to choose from instead of have the hardcoded job name so I thought it made for a great opportunity to write a part 2.    Step One Create a Data Source that points to MSDB on the server that the SQL Agent job that you want to run ...
  SSRS
  12/11/2009  by DevinKnight  Comments: 2
• Running SSIS 32-bit drivers or tasks on a 64 bit machine
  Running SSIS on a 64-bit machine has several caveat that developers need to be aware of.  Tasks like the ActiveX task and Execute DTS 2000 Package Task only work either on a 32-bit machine or by running in 32-bit mode on a 64-bit machine.  This is also the case for many data providers like Excel, Access, and many ODBC drivers.  If you are working on a 64-bit machine don't worry there is a work around to keep yourself productive while still using 32-bit tasks and drivers. Executing In BIDS Right-...
  SSIS
  12/11/2009  by DevinKnight  Comments: 0
• Reporting Services Carriage Return
  Often when designing a report you may find a need to concatenate values in an expression.  For example, you want a column with full names but your data source has names stored separately for first name and last name.  Easy enough you can write an expression like this: =Fields!FirstName.Value + " " + Fields!LastName.Value Problem solved right?  Well let's complicate things a little.  Let's say you not only want the full names but all addresses as well but you don't want it on the same line.  You ...
  SSRS
  12/11/2009  by DevinKnight  Comments: 0
• MDX Utility Belt of Calculations Part 4
  This is part four in the series of blog posts that will help in building a library of calculations you can use as a reference in any analysis services cube you build. You can find the previous posts to this blog series below: Part 1 – ParallelPeriod Part 2 – PrevMember Part 3 – PrevMember minus CurrentMember All of these blog posts are formatted to give you the business problem, a general solution and then the calculation needed to finish the job.  Problem You need to show company sales year to ...
  SSAS, MDX
  12/7/2009  by DevinKnight  Comments: 3