Author Archives: jwelch

A recent post on the MSDN forums was asking about using the WMI Data Reader Task to retrieve information and send it to a SQL Server destination. I wasn’t very familiar with the task, so I decided to try it … Continue reading →

Jamie posted a question on ragged hierarchies to his blog today:  Are you balanced or unbalanced? I started thinking about it this evening, and decided to post my thoughts here. I think that, for the most part, business requirements drive should … Continue reading →

At the first of this month, I received word that I will be presenting at the PASS Summit this year. They had a late push for more BI front-end presentations, and evidently they were desperate enough to accept not one, … Continue reading →

And you can download it from here. It looks like there are a few new improvements in Reporting Services, and some new data types in SSIS (to complement the new data types in the relational engine), but nothing too major. … Continue reading →

I’ve recently gotten started on a project using Microsoft’s new PerformancePoint Server (PPS) Plan software. I’m actually writing this on a flight back from Seattle after meeting with the PPS team. It was a valuable trip, and I learned a … Continue reading →

One of the staples in agile (and many other methodologies) development is the idea of iterative development. That’s the idea that, rather than doing an entire project in one big pass, it is broken up into smaller iterations. Each iteration ideally consists … Continue reading →

This is a Random Bits post – not on my normal BI related topics, but something I found useful and wanted to record somewhere in case it could help someone else. I recently upgraded to a new laptop running Vista 64-bit. … Continue reading →

I’d put in a request for additional support for unit testing in Integration Services on Connect (https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=276292). Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it will make the cut for SQL Server 2008. I used automated unit testing extensively when I was more … Continue reading →

It’s been tough finding time to write any content recently, but this was a scenario that came up recently both at work and on the forums, so I decided to write it up. It’s another variation on processing flat files … Continue reading →

In my last post, I talked about using the new MERGE statement in SQL Server 2008. It allows you to merge the data in a result set with a table, based on a join condition that you specify. This is … Continue reading →