Redundancy is sometimes a good thing. However, redundant code usually isn’t. Creating multiple copies of the same coding logic – whether it’s a C# script, T-SQL procedure, SSIS package, or otherwise – leads to inefficiencies in maintaining the same code base in several locations. This design pattern tends to lead to a technical debt that is extremely expensive to repay….
I am a consultant specifically focused on data architecture, ETL, data warehousing, and reporting. I am available for consulting engagements on-site, remotely, or a combination of the two. Among the consulting services I offer: Data Warehouse Consulting Building a single, centralized source of truth for business decision-making requires careful attention to all of the moving parts: creating the right data model, moving and…
“Teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” While most of my clients ask me to build a solution for them, many others have their own staff who, with proper training, can build and support solutions with minimal assistance. I am passionate about helping organizations do data warehousing, ETL, and data quality the right way, and over…
This past weekend I made the relatively short (about 3 hours) trip to the Oklahoma City area to attend and speak at the third annual SQL Saturday event there. I’ve been invited to speak at each of their three events, and I’ve been impressed with each one of them so far. The folks in the OKC and surrounding groups have…
Of the many emerging technologies I’m currently using, there’s nothing that excites me more than Biml. If you’re not familiar with it, Biml (short for Business Intelligence Markup Language) is a language that allows business intelligence developers to programmatically create and document SSIS packages. I’ve found this to be incredibly useful in environments that have a large number of packages,…
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be delivering three, one-day preconference seminars this summer prior to three different SQL Saturday events: Iowa City, Iowa – Friday, July 26th (before SQL Saturday 239 – East Iowa) Orlando, Florida – Friday, September 13th (before SQL Saturday 232 – Orlando) Denver, Colorado – Friday, September 27th (before SQL Saturday 190 – Denver) For…
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be doing a tour of the 4 SQL Server user groups in central Colorado next week. I’ll be speaking at these four user groups: Monday (3/18): Northern Colorado Database Professionals Tuesday (3/19): Boulder SQL Server User Group Wednesday (3/20): Colorado Springs SQL Server User Group Thursday (3/21): Denver SQL Server User Group At each…
Since the release of Visual Studio 2012, business intelligence developers have been limited in how much they could use this tool due to the fact that it did not support BI project types (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS). Today, that limitation is now gone with the release by Microsoft of SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012. …
With the year 2012 now in the rear view mirror, and while I’m still in the midst of my holiday vacation (two whole weeks! Feels very strange…) , I thought I’d take stock of my tasks and accomplishments of the past year. Sharing knowledge I must sound like a broken record when I say this, but I feel incredibly honored…
Do your civic duty, and vote today! Voting is now open for SQLBits, to be held in Nottingham, UK this May. This event is probably the best-known SQL Server event outside of the US, and unlike most other such events, they use a popular-vote model for general session selection. I’ve submitted three general sessions: When ETL Goes Bad: Handling Errors…