Recently while working for a client that was running SQL Server 2008 R2 I was tasked with loading an Excel Macro (.xlsm) enabled workbook. If you have ever tried this yourself you may have tried using the default Excel provider, which does not work. In fact, this is the error message you get after trying to close the Excel connection manager. I thought I’d go ahead and document the solution in both 2008 and 2012 for you. Both solutions require you have the Microsoft Access Database Engine ...
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Today I’m thrilled and humbled to announce that I will be speaking 3 times at PASS Summit in November 6-9! This is my favorite of all conferences to attend and I hope you can make it too. Go register now here . A really fun way you can browse all the sessions that will be at PASS Summit is by using LobsterPot ’s HTML 5 PivotViewer control http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au/PASSSummit2012 . Here’s the sessions I’ll be delivering at Summit. Creating a Power View Reporting Solut...
Using Active Directory groups are a great way to manage and maintain security for a solution. Think about if you had to manually add users to your Analysis Services roles each time someone new wanted access to your cube. Ideally, you would have an AD group in the SSAS role membership and anytime someone wants access to the cube they simply need to get added to the AD group and nothing would need to be changed in Analysis Services. My goal in this post is not to convince you that AD groups are a ...
SSIS 2012 has added a few new expression functions and I thought I’d spend a short time detailing each. LEFT The LEFT function believe it or not is a new function. In past versions of SSIS you had a RIGHT function available but no LEFT. Well SSIS expression haters you now have what you want. This function is described as: Returns the left part of a character expression with the specified number of characters. Template: LEFT( «character_expression», «number» ) Exampl...