Last week, I was given an Excel file that contained updated product information that we needed to load into our data warehouse. The problem was that the "product" column was a combination of the product ID and the description of the product. What makes this scenario slightly more difficult is that there are tens of thousands of records (making manual manipulation impossible) and there is no set length of the product ID. There are a couple of ways to go about separating your data. One of those wa...
Read More
I recently found myself in a position where I needed to pull data from two completely different sources (one, an AS400 and the other, a SQL Server 2000). It was the same type of data, just in different locations, so it needed to make up one dimension table. For this example, let's say that we are building a data warehouse for an umbrella company that has multiple companies under it that sell the same type of products. However, their data is stored seperately and there is very little commonality,...
Recently I was tasked with creating a report that needed to have a product hierarchy occupy only one field. The hierarchy I will use as an example is comprised of three fields: Manufacturer, Category, and Model. And the output of my stored procedure is as shown below. Now, when you create row groups for Manufacturer, Category, and Model and then preview your report, it will look something like this. The problem with this is that the client wants those first three columns to only take up one colu...
Hey everyone! Just wanted to remind y'all of the SQL Saturday event here in Jacksonville (at the UNF campus) this Saturday, May 8th. This is a completely free event for anyone who wants to attend. We are having some big names in the SQL world presenting a broad spectrum of topics. The presentations start at 9:00 but it's wise to get there about an hour or so early, especially if you don't have your registration all squared away. Below is a list of presentations, who's presenting them, where they...