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I’m excited to announce CatCompare – a command-line interface (CLI) for SSIS Catalog Compare – is in pre-release testing. I plan to release the next update of SSIS Catalog Compare with an option to purchase the GUI product stand-alone or the GUI + CLI for a higher price. BUT… If you purchase SSIS Catalog Compare …
Continue reading Coming Soon: A Command-Line Interface for Managing SSIS Catalogs

Waterfall project management is a serial approach to the phases of a project. Proponents of waterfall methodologies hold it’s best to plan: gather requirements, design the solution, develop it, test it, deploy and maintain it in discrete steps. Critics maintain it is impossible to know all of the requirements prior to design or development. by …
Continue reading Agile or Waterfall?

Update: Voting is closed and the winners have been announced! Whether you get an email from the PASS organization or not, voting is now open for the PASS Board. Visit the PASS website and log in. You should see the myPASS page: If you’re eligible to vote, your page should appear similar to mine, shown …
Continue reading PASS Board Elections–Voting is Open!

The SSIS Catalog is surfaced within the SSISDB database. In this post I describe some tips for managing your SSIS Catalog database, named SSISDB. For information regarding restoring SSISDB, please see Deploying SSIS Projects to a Restored SSIS Catalog (SSISDB). Create the SSIS Catalog To create the SSIS Catalog, connect to an instance of SQL …
Continue reading Managing the SSIS Catalog

I’m home after a day of travel that included waking up at quarter-til-early to catch a cab to SeaTac with Tim Mitchell [blog | @Tim_Mitchell], bumpy flights, and a two-hour drive back to Farmville. We had a fantastic time! Our students asked lots of interesting questions and Tim and I were, I believe, able to …
Continue reading 2017 SQL Skills SSIS Immersion Events

Microsoft released an update to SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) 2016 on 20 Sep 2016 – the tool used to design databases, SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS solutions. I can hear you thinking, “How do I get the update, Andy?” You can get version 14.0.60918.0 here. If you have the installer for SQL Server 2016 handy, you …
Continue reading A New Version of SSDT is Available

I apologize for misleading people who read my writings and have heard me speak on the topic of the SSIS Catalog. Here’s what I recently realized: The execution_id is different from the operation_id in the SSISDB database. In the past, I complained about the execution_id and operation_id being the same value and meaning different things. …
Continue reading I Was Wrong (About the SSIS Catalog)

One of our mottos at Enterprise Data & Analytics is, “Deliver Value.” I can hear you thinking, “That’s nice, Andy. What does that mean?” I’m glad you asked. !Value Let’s start with what value is not, shall we? Value is not the least expensive. As a consultant, I often “bid” for consulting work, sometimes referred …
Continue reading Value

I’m honored and all giggly with anticipation about presenting at SQL Saturday 560 in Charlotte next Saturday, 17 Sep 2016! I’m presenting Biml and SSIS Frameworks, and I hope to see many of you there. For the SSIS Frameworks part of my presentation, I’m using SSIS Framework Community Edition, a free and open source SSIS …
Continue reading I’m Presenting at SQL Saturday Charlotte (#560) Next Saturday!

A couple years ago, I wrote a series of guest posts about the Basics of SSIS for my friend Pinal Dave’s [Blog | @pinaldave] popular blog, SQL Authority. In that series, I pointed out that I use only a handful of SSIS Control Flow tasks when designing SSIS packages. You can find the series here: …
Continue reading The Basics of Biml – the Execute SQL Task