SQL PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Days 3-5

The last two days have been an absolute blur.  As I first posted this week, I had planned to blog daily about my goings-on, but I’ve been running nonstop – all good things, fortunately – but it interrupted my plans to blog every day. Day 3: Tuesday 08:00am: Headed back to the MVP Summit.  Rain again. 06:00pm: Back in Seattle,…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 2

It’s another beautiful day in Seattle. And by beautiful, I mean overcast and threatening rain.  Today will be mostly consumed by the MVP Summit, with some fun stuff scheduled for later in the day.  At 6pm today, I’m headed back to the Tap House for BI Over Beers, a gathering of business intelligence professionals sponsored by Varigence. 08:00am: On the…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 1

Today is the first day of official activities for the week.  The PASS Summit hasn’t yet started, but I’ll be spending the day at the MVP Summit, surrounded by a few hundred people much smarter than I am.  The details of the MVP Summit are all covered under NDA, so today’s update will be brief. 06:00am: I woke up and…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 0

This week, I’m attending two different summit events in the Seattle area.  On Sunday through Tuesday, I’ll be participating in the Microsoft MVP Summit in Bellevue, Washington.  For the remainder of the week, I’ll be attending and presenting at the PASS Summit in Seattle.  Although there is much I won’t be sharing (especially at the beginning of the week), I’m…


Five people you should meet at the PASS Summit

As I write this, I’m airborne and on my way to Seattle for the summit week (the Microsoft MVP Summit, followed by the PASS Summit).  I was struck with the notion – and not for the first time – that I’m not really looking forward to these events for the technical content as much as I’m looking forward to networking…


It’s That Time Again

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” No, not the end-of-year festival of repetitive music, overeating, and trampling on other people to find that perfect gift.  No, it’s time again for the PASS Summit, the annual gathering of SQL Server and data professionals from around the world.  The event, which is run by the organization formerly known as the…


Resolving SSDT-BI Installation with IsVisualStudio2012ProInstalled() error

Recently I was building a new virtual machine for presentations, and loaded up my usual battery – Windows 7, SQL Server 2012, and SSDT-BI.  The installation of these pieces went as expected, and everything appeared to work well – until I attempted to execute an SSIS package on this new setup.  When I did so, I received the following cryptic…


Four things I wish I’d known back then

In the blogging meme of the day, I was tagged by my friend Tim Costello to share four things I wish I’d known back then.  The only hard part was paring the list down to four items. I think back to 15 years ago, when I was working retail and desperately seeking something else.  Something I could really get into. …


Mile High Tech Con

There’s a brand new business intelligence conference launching next month in Denver, Colorado.  The Mile High Tech Con is a three-day event taking place July 24-26, 2014, and is aimed at business intelligence practitioners, data analysts, and information managers/CIOs. From the event website: Featuring three days of sessions and events focusing on Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Mile High Tech…


SSIS Parent-Child Architecture in Package Deployment Mode

In my first post in this series, I covered the essentials of SSIS parent-child design patterns, including discussing a number of advantages for using such patterns.  In this post, I’m going to demonstrate how to build parent-child structures using package deployment mode. SSIS Parent-Child Architecture in Package Deployment Mode Package deployment mode is available (though not the default behavior) in…