Hello one, hello all. It has been quite a while since I have blogged. I am looking forward to starting back up and get in full swing of the things again. This is going to be a short blog post as I am just letting you all know about a local Code Camp that I will be speaking at this coming weekend. If you are in or near Jacksonville Florida, this is a great event put on by the local Code Camp team. Please be sure to check out the website for the lineup, further details and to register for the even...
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Last weekend I travelled down to SQL Saturday 85 in Orlando, FL. Like all of the other events that I’ve presented at, this event was great. The last I heard, there were nearly 300 attendees and it seemed that all were very pleased with the event. Check-in went smoothly especially with the pre-checkin documents that you could print and bring to the event. Lunch was very good. Most of the presenters put their SQL Saturday Apron’s on and dished out the grub. Then the talks… What ...
As most of you already know, Reporting Services reports make use of Datasets to get data. These Datasets can get the data from Text, Table (rarely used) or a Stored Procedure. Which query type to use has been a topic on many forum boards and I’ve had this question pop up several times over the years during presentations and general discussion. Sometimes asked “Which one is better to use; a stored procedure or text?” or “What is considered best practice…?” Wit...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I am going to show you how to use the Address Parse Transform available in Task Factory to parse address related data and convert it into a Standardized US Postal Services format. For key features and details check out PragmaticWorks.com to ...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Data Validation Transform to verify that data is consistent before loading it into a database. I’ll also show you how to create a regular expression for a date value in integer format. For exa...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Compression Task to zip and unzip a file. Here are the key features and details from PragmaticWorks.com about this task: Compresses or decompresses a file or directory. Many companies struggle with ...
Grab your computer and get registered for SQL Saturday 85 in Orlando. If you’re new to the SQL world and have never heard of SQL Saturday, it is a free event put on by the SQL community…for the SQL community… This is an opportunity to learn new things and brush up on some of those less frequently used. Shawn McGeehee and others have worked very hard to make this a really great event, so click on one of the links below and register. At this event, I will be giving a talk at 4P...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Terminator Destination be used as a way to test and view the data before performing more transforms or dumping into a destination. This component is completely free and can be downloaded on Pragmati...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Surrogate Key Transform to generate a new surrogate key while in the data flow. Here are the key features and details from PragmaticWorks.com about this task: Adds an identifier column to a data flo...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the SFTP Task to securely perform various file transfer tasks such as download or upload a file to a remote server. You can also do things like download a complete directory, remove files and create dir...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Email Source and Delete Email task to search through and remove emails from an email server. Here are the key features and details from PragmaticWorks.com about this task: Reads email from a mailbox...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Data Cleansing Transform to correct some data before it gets put into a destination. Here are the key features and details from PragmaticWorks.com about this task: Used to cleanse data from a source...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the File Properties task to check to see if a file exists before attempting to load it into a SQL Server database. Here are the key features and details from PragmaticWorks.com about this task: Reads th...
Task Factory is a software product created by Pragmatic Works. It provides many custom SSIS components which help developers creating SSIS packages become more efficient. And as we all know, when we are more efficient, we are more productive. In this nugget, I’m going to show you how to use the Advanced Email and SMS Task. Yeah, that’s right, I said SMS. You can even send a message to a mobile device on any carrier service or using POP3, IMAP or SMTP Here are the key features from Pr...
Y esterday, my wife (twitter: @sherrilmcdonald) and I spoke at JAX Code Camp 2011 in Jacksonville, Florida. The event was well organized and gave me the idea that a lot of time was spent in making sure that nearly all of the 300 attendees (approx.) were well taken care of. Check-in for me and Sherri took about 30 seconds (if that)! Very well done Bayer and all those that helped put this event together. Another thing that I liked was that the schedule was pretty much posted everywhere you turned....
I started this blog a few weeks ago when I heard rumors that CTP3 was coming soon, but figured that I should probably wait until it is released…Hit the forward button…check…Make some modifications to blog…check… It is July 12 th , 2011 and finally…After months of waiting for SQL Server 2011 (Denali) CTP3 to be released, we have a download link. Now it’s time to start playing with the latest and greatest, so carve out a machine to install it on and ...
For the past 7 years, Bayer White and other Jacksonville .Net leaders have put on great Code Camps for .Net Coders. It’s that time of year again and next weekend (Saturday August 27 th , 2011) is going to be jammed pack with content to get you to the next level or just a refresher on some of those items you may not work on very frequently. Either way, this is a great event containing 25 experienced speakers covering 32 sessions across 7 tracks for (at the current moment) 302 attendees. Spa...
Are you considering making a change to your view or stored procedure? Or possibly you are considering moving your database to another server and you want to know how the move would impact your SQL Server. With one of Pragmatic Works software tools, BI Documenter, you can easily identify how your environment would be effected. One of the nice features in BI Documenter is called the Impact Analysis/Object Lineage. When you have selected the various BI components (SQL Server, SSAS, SSIS and SSRS) t...
I found out last week from a good friend and President of the Columbus GA SQL Server Users Group, that they needed a speaker and would love to have me talk about SSRS. Since I have given SSRS presentations for the past two years, I should be able to whip something up last minute. So, as I sit here getting my slide deck in order and demos worked out, I figured that I would write a quick blog to let you all know about it. J Save the below details to your Calendar and be sure to sign on. Talk Detai...
While playing around with Denali, I came across a function that I believe should have been included in SQL for years. It is called EOMONTH and it “returns the last day of the month that contains a specified date”. You can pass in any date value and it will return the date of the last day of that month. Listing 1 demonstrates two ways to use this new function. Figure 1 shows results of executing Listing 1 on SQL Server Denali CTP 3. Listing 1: New EOMONTH TSQL Function SELECT EOMONTH ( '2/14/2010...
I started this blog a few weeks ago when I heard rumors that CTP3 was coming soon, but figured that I should probably wait until it is released…Hit the forward button…check…Make some modifications to blog…check… It is July 12 th , 2011 and finally…After months of waiting for SQL Server 2011 (Denali) CTP3 to be released, we have a download link. Now it’s time to start playing with the latest and greatest, so carve out a machine to install it on and get playing. J I know that I’m not the only one ...
I wrote this early in June, but lost it in my blog pile again and just found it… First and foremost, I would like to thank each and every person who submitted a speaker evaluation at SQL Rally back in May. Getting up and presenting isn’t as easy as some make it look and I am no exception. It has gotten easier for me over the years, but just like an elite athlete, you have days where you are on top of your game and days that you are slightly off. And although my results are an average of 4.5 over...
A user recently asked how to generate a file link using SSIS so that it could be inserted into the database. While creating an example for him, I figured I might as well go all out and make a blog about it. So, here it is. I created a flat file called FileLinkExtract.txt and loaded it manually for my test file. Listing 1: Contents of FileLinkExtract.txt FileID,FilePath,FileName 1,C:\test\,File1.txt 2,C:\test\,File2.txt 3,C:\test\,File3.txt 4,C:\test\,File4.txt 5,C:\test\,File5.txt Then, I create...
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...