Below I will show you how to use the SalesForce Source within your dataflow. As you will see below this is very easy to configure thanks to Task Factory. First things first you need to drag over the SalesForce Source into the dataflow. After that you will need to create a connection to SalesForce using your email address and Password + Security Token or use your existing connection. After the connection has been created the next step is to select which object from SalesForce you want to pull dat...
Read More
Here at Pragmatic Works, we enjoy putting on a show for the community. As can be seen by Training on the T’s (Tuesday’s and Thursday’s that is)! Tomorrow should be one of the most enjoyable Reporting Services webinars that you can learn some good tips using SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2. I can’t tell you exactly what Sherri (and super awesome, but I’m kind of biased) is going to show you tomorrow, but it will be one that you don’t want to miss. Register NOW and log in tomorrow morning. B...
Someone asked me a long time ago how to do watermarking in Reporting Services and I meant to write a blog about it. Then I was asked again just yesterday. So, I figured it was worth a quick blog. In this quick blog, I will show you how to use an image that appears in the background of the report. An assumption is made that you already have an image that can be used as a watermark. I fired up BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio for those of you that are new to BI) and added a new repor...
I really have not posted much in the way of blogs on here lately. I've been putting together what I'm hoping will be a useful ( and free ) .PDF that you ( as a BIDN user ) will be able to pass on to people you meet that helps them get set up and familiar with BIDN. It's a series of HOWTO -style documents written in an easy to follow and very informal fashion. Right now, I'm working on a section dealing with: HOWTO use the BIDN forums So I thought I'd share some thoughts from the "using the forum...
If you’ve ever tried to use the Aggregate function on a calculated measure, you’ve seen the following error: This is a problem if you’re trying to calculate something like Year To Date for a calculated measure. Take the following MDX query (which I understand doesn't make sense and isn't something you'd do in a real world situation, but just go with it for the sake of the example), which can be run against the Adventure Works cube, for example: WITH MEMBER [Measures].[YTD Average Price] AS Aggre...
Kohai is a japanese term for junior student, and surrounded by the people that I have been lately, I am feeling very junior. Not much of a noob because I think I can probably program my way out of a wet paper bag, I find myself way back on the experience part. So I did something about it. I went and signed up for the Pragmatic Works BI Bootcamp, and I can't tell you how glad I am that I did. It was a really great mix of tech, fun, good discussion, and in my case, sushi. (I was away from home and...
At the recent TechEd North America 2011 conference, details on the next version of SQL Server called “Denali” were released. Part of those details were an update on the SQL Server Analysis Services ( SSAS ) roadmap. The main new feature in SSAS is a new data model, called the Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM). You can read the full details here , but the summary of it is as follows: It embraces the relational (also called tabular) data model and brings it together with the multidimensi...
Webinar: How To Create Awesome Reports!!! I am really excited to announce that I have a webinar tomorrow (6/30/2011) with Pragmatic Works, Training on the T’s. This is going to be an exciting 1 hour event that will be packed with how too’s for some pretty cool features of SSRS 2008R2. Want a teaser? C’mon, you didn’t think I would really tell you too much, did you? Today and early tomorrow morning is the last chance to sign-up for the event. https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/789320928 I am m...
After completing the Pragmatic Works Foundation I found that a local college offers certification in database development, and this will allow me an opportunity to get more hands-on practice with SQL, which is something I really want and need. Before I spend money for these courses, though, I decided to use the BI community for my own benefit and give my mentor a break (I call her my mentor, but I don't know if she would actually claim me as her protege!) I know these are good courses to take in...
SQL Server “ Denali ” is the code name for the next version of SQL Server. The CTP1 of Denali was released on Nov 8, 2010, and you can download it here . The next CTP will be available this summer, and you can signup to be notified when it is released. I will have future posts in the next week that will cover the following major new items in Denali: the new SSAS features, the new SQL Server Developer Tools, codename ‘Juneau”, and the new reporting tool called Project Crescent. In the meantime, h...
Recently I found myself working with Data Driven Subscriptions (DDS) for a client and I ran into a pesky little issue. I set Up the DDS as I had for several other subscriptions but there was 1 in particular that kept throwing an error. After reviewing the subscription to see if it was set up correctly and making sure the query syntax was correct the DDS was still not working. Since the Report Manager doesn’t go into detail to tell you anything about the errors my last and final result was to go ...
Updating Resume is NOT Lulz Wow, it's been a crazy last couple of months with LulzSec running around doing what they do. Oh, what's that? You've never heard of them ? Well for many outside of IT this is probably the case. For those of us who ARE in IT have more than likely heard of them as well as their high-profile hacking exploits over the last couple of months. This weekend TechCrunch posted a pretty good discussion piece on how the media has handled LulzSec's exploits. To summarize in my own...
If you’re anything like me, you use many different machines on a daily or sometimes weekly basis. Some of these are on computers you use during working hours and some during your non-working hours. Well, let’s just call these non-working hours, non-billable-hours right? J As I tend to do quite a bit of work when I’m away from work! Alright… I digressed a bit, but the point is this…We may have an elaborate setup of computers or virtual machines (hopefully following some standard naming convention...
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 devote a certain amount of hours each week to learning. Chances are, what you know now will be obsolete in a few years. For me, that is what makes my career so interesting and so much fun…I am always learning new stuff. In any job I have had, if I was not constantly learning something new, I became bored. L...
The hesitation is because I have no brain cells left. Three letters for you....M D X. Oye! Seriously tho, it's not as bad as I thought it was, and conceptually it is relatively straightforward. So we got in today and started in on Reporting Services using the Cubes and Datawarehouses we'd been building so far. Originally we were going to do MDX in the morning, but it got switched up. Very cool stuff in SSRS using map functions, going to spend a while on it tonight and tomorrow evening waiting fo...
Getting the YTD from a cube is a simple MDX formula either using the PeriodToDate function or using the YTD function. One request you may get it to see the previous year to date. So if you are looking at March 21, 2011 year to date, you want to see the year to date from March 21, 2010. This can be done by using the ParallelPeriod function. Here is the Previous YTD calculation using adventure works. (PARALLELPERIOD( [Due Date].[Date].[Calendar Year], 1, [Due Date].[Date] ), [Measures].[Sales Amou...
I'm not even sure if that's correct french, but you get the point. It's Day 3 of the class, and Day 4 for me down in FL. I'd like to put in a request to lower the temp before I come next time. It's been 95+ the whole week. Thankfully, we're inside all day, but getting in my car...with the black interior...that I stupidly parked in the sun? Yeah, that's fun. So what else have I been doing besides stuffing myself with Jacksonville/Orange Park Sushi? Being shown once again how important it is to un...
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. But if you want to earn more money, have more job opportunities, and, at least for me, do something more challenging and rewarding, read on: So what is BI? When someone asks me what I do for a living, I usually respond with "Business Intelligence Developer". I then get a blank stare. I tell them my ...
I'm currently in Jacksonville, or just south of there actually, sitting in my hotel room after my 2nd day of bootcamp. I hadn't realized I could post to a blog here or I would have from Day 1 of the class. The folx at Pragmatic Works are hosting a 5 day BI Boot Camp and I thought I would share my thoughts so far. Firstly, no I don't work for them, nor do we consult with them (at least not yet). I attended a 2 day BI Best Practices seminar in NYC a few months ago and have been impressed with this...
I want to thank one of my more recent students for giving me blog topic. I am not going to mention names, so thank you……… Hopefully, you are reading this and know who you are. After his question, I thought to myself, SELF I should share this with the WOOOORRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!! Here is the question: I had to reinstall my SQL-Server 2008 server and now when I am trying to go to the URL http://svrsqlrpts/Reports/Pages/Folder.aspx , I am getting the error: User 'SVRSQLRPTS\AdminDBA' doe...
A nice new little add-in available for SSMS on Codeplex . It helps with repetitive tasks involved with SSAS such as processing and deployment. As the site says, the goal for the Analysis Services Helper is to fill in gaps in the toolset inside SSMS, and decrease time spent on administrative or repetitive tasks. SSMS currently only offers the menu option to do a process full or process default on the cube, while this add-in will let you process multiple dimensions or cubes and set individual proc...
When I read NULL my first thought is Blank/Empty. Since people have different ways of implying a column may be empty, it is very common to need to cleanse out any “NULL” values. For this Blog I am going to not only show how to handle a NULL value, I am also going to show you how to handle values that would imply NULL in a data source, such as a blank space in Excel, or an Oracle Essbase source where you would see a value like “#MISSING” or “#MI”. The most common way to handle these issues would ...
One of my duties at work is to teach a class on using SSIS. On the last day of class, I cover various admin topics. One of my favorite segments is using configuration files in SSIS packages. There is a known bug I like to show that involves adding two connections to the XML config file and then removing one of the connections from the package. If you execute the package, you will get an error immediately in 2005 and 2008. However, in 2008 R2, you don’t see the error until you try to edit the con...
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 focus is on the best practices and repeatable patterns for developing and maintaining large data warehouses on the Microsoft SQL Server platform. Put this on the top of your list as the next white paper to read. But be warned it is not something you ca...
With all of the cool new features that are coming out of Task Factory sometimes it’s really easy to overlook some of the tasks that we use every day that make our lives easier everyday as a developer. One of those tasks that I use on a regular basis is the Terminator Destination . Without the Terminator Destination I would have to actually configure a task in order to test the package to see if it was doing what it should be doing. With the Terminator Destination all you literally have to do is ...