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In many shops, I am guessing there are multiple servers. Development, Production, maybe a Staging, etc.
With SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), you set up data sources, connection to databases. In SSAS you usually have a connection which then you build your data source view off of, and in [...]

Last night I configured up SQL Server Master Data Services (MDS) on a test box. It looks good so far. I ran into a few issues with the box/setup that I had to tweak in order to get it working. I had to allow “handlers” and “modules” in the applicationHost config on the machine. IIS [...]

SQL 2005 introduced DDL Triggers, where you could catch events on your DDL statements in SQL, and hopefully most DBA’s are catching them, at least to a table and have some kind of report on who is adding, changing and deleting what objects.
What I wanted to do was capture that, but also keep and automatic [...]

Sometimes you have some pretty complex ETL’s going in SSIS, and you might have multiple projects/solutions that need to call other SSIS Packages or SQL Agent Jobs and you have a pretty big production going on. You might have an ETL solution that needs to kick off other packages, and you can either import those [...]

I manage some servers that have many cubes. OK, a lot of cubes (60+ on one). I needed some way to output a report of last processed time, last schema update, etc. Now, there are about 5 different ways to do this (one being the SSAS Stored Procedure Project), but this is what I came [...]

Running a SQL Agent job to do an ETL/Cube Processing, you might also want to check the status of the cube after you process it, just to make sure.
Create a job step that is a T-SQL type, and

DECLARE @forecast VARCHAR(10)
    SELECT  @forecast = CAST("[Measures].[Forecast-Part]" AS VARCHAR(10))         FROM     [...]

For a while, I have been working on figuring out a “better” way to get data from DB2 to Microsoft SQL Server. There are many different options and approaches and environments, and this one is mine, your mileage may vary.
Usually, when pulling data from DB2 to any Windows box, the first thing [...]

Throughout all my years in different places, I have seen SQL, Oracle, Firebird, MySQL, DB2, Zortec, Access, and probably a few other crazy databases set up and run, and administered. Of course most of them along the way have been Microsoft SQL Server, (6.5, 7, 2000, 2005, 2008). I’ve worked with some knowledgeable DBA’s, and [...]

In SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), pretty much every task or transformation lets you set “expressions” up. Expressions are basically ways to set property values programmatically.
Here are two scenarios where you might use expressions (there are 100’s of uses, these are just two that are kind of related).

Multiple Database Select – You have multiple [...]

At my new gig, I am working on a project that is ASP.NET with an Oracle Database backend. Today I ran into an error.
Data provider internal error(-3000) [System.String]
What does this error mean? Heck if I know, its a generic error basically telling you that something is wrong with your connection to the database more than [...]