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The tune to a Bush song is running through my head as I type this… the band, not the president – although imagining the President singing the song is an interesting brain-stretch. It’s a fact of IT life that everything scales. Some successfully, even. Problems start when things do not scale successfully (or well). It …
Continue reading Everything Scales

Introduction   SSIS is a fantastic ETL engine. When I build an ETL solution in SSIS, I like to collect runtime metrics. Why? I use the data initially to determine a baseline for performance and to determine, in some cases, if I’m loading within a defined window.   I refer to this process of collecting performance and runtime metrics as ETL …
Continue reading SSIS Design Pattern – ETL Instrumentation, Part 1

Introduction  I was recently reminded that iteration matures software. The History of Andy, Part 1  Like many DBAs, I was a software developer in another life. I built web applications – working my way up from HTML through DHTML and finally to ASP – and could regale (and bore) you young whipper-snappers with war-stories of …
Continue reading Iteration = Maturity

Introduction I sometimes miss the ActiveX task in DTS. It was cool because “if you could see it, you could change it.” I used the ActiveX Task to generate dynamic SQL. When To Use Dynamic SQL In SSIS There are lots of uses for dynamic SQL in SSIS. If you find yourself using the same SQL statements …
Continue reading SSIS Design Pattern – Dynamic SQL

Although it doesn’t mention my name on the PASS website, I’m presenting the PASS webcast tomorrow on Team Edition for Database Professionals. If you’re interested you can sign up to attend at the PASS website. Hope to see you there! :{> Andy

Eric Wise drew some heat from the developer community at CodeBetter.com with this post about the need for a DBA during development (see my post on the subject here). I think Eric makes a couple good points, one explicit, one implied: 1. (Explicit) A DBA – or Database Developer, more accurately (and there is a difference) – adds …
Continue reading A Follow-up to Database Professionals: An Enterprise Requirement

A friend (who shall remain nameless) recently told me his company interviewed a competent database developer and DBA. All seemed in agreement an offer would be forthcoming until the very end of the recruiting process. At that time, someone made the comment “we don’t need a DBA.” It would be notable if this sentiment wasn’t so …
Continue reading Database Professionals: An Enterprise Requirement

This re-post from my Applied Team System blog (which was a repost from my old SQL Server Central blog) was inspired by James Luetkehoelter‘s Agile Development and the “DBA” post a few days back. I’ll have more to say about database developers, agile methodologies, and the need for a DBA in posts to come. Enjoy!    I received a cool compliment today …
Continue reading Which "flavor" DBA are you?

  Update: For more up-to-date material on this topic, please see the Stairway to Incremental Loads at SQL Server Central for more information! (Free registration required).  Introduction Loading data from a data source to SQL Server is a common task. It’s used in Data Warehousing, but increasingly data is being staged in SQL Server for non-Business-Intelligence purposes. Maintaining data integrity …
Continue reading SSIS Design Pattern – Incremental Loads