Contents tagged with SQL Server
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Why I love my job: Quick Start engagements
One of the best parts of my job as a Business Intelligence consultant is what happens when I get a new customer. Often our first engagement with a customer that is challenged by their BI or reporting capability is a PowerBI Quick Start. This is typically a two-week intensive engagement where an Imaginet consultant (like me) embeds themselves into a team in the organization and helps the customer determine what their needs are, where they would like to be, and to discover a path to get there.
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SQL Management Studio, Trusted Connections, and Remote User accounts
I often work for clients that require me to access their systems remotely, and usually through a VPN. Frequently, I use a Remote Desktop (RDP) session to access their resources after I have connected in via their VPN. I don't mind this, but often it is easier to use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) on my own desktop rather than remotely.
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Scaling Azure SQL databases up and down
I've recently been working on a project where we push data from an on-premise database to a set of Azure SQL databases daily, and use that Azure SQL database as the source for a Power BI dataset. The dataset gets refreshed once a day.
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SQL Server Maintenance Plans - how I use them
Jonathan Cox (@hackdba) has a good post for starting out on SQL Maintenance Plans.
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A pseudo-listener for AlwaysOn Availability Groups for SQL Server virtual machines running in Azure
I am involved in a project that is implementing SharePoint 2013 on virtual machines hosted in Azure. The back end data tier consists of two Azure VMs running SQL Server 2012, with the SharePoint databases contained in an AlwaysOn Availability Group. I used this "Tutorial: AlwaysOn Availability Groups in Windows Azure (GUI)" to help me implement this setup.
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Query Logging in Analysis Services
On a project I work on, we capture the queries that get executed on our Analysis Services instance (SQL Server 2008 R2) and use the table for helping us to build aggregations and also we aggregate the query log daily into a data warehouse of operational data so we can track usage of our Analysis databases by users over time.
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SQL Table stored as a Heap - the dangers within
Nearly all of the time I create a table, I include a primary key, and often that PK is implemented as a clustered index. Those two don't always have to go together, but in my world they almost always do.
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SSIS Bulk Insert task that bit me in the butt...
I've been working on SSIS packages that extract data from production databases and put them into data warehouses, and recently I hit an issue using the Bulk Insert task that bit me real good.
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SQL Database diagramming and VSTS Data Dude
At Imaginet, we use Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (Data Dude) on our projects to manage database schemas, keep them in source control, unit testing, and lots of other nice features.
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MS BI Conference: Monday Keynote
Here are my notes on the Monday morning keynote: