SSWUG Vconf – Day 1 Links and Tidbits

Below are tips, links and tidbits from today’s sessions. Use at your own risk.

Solving Business Pains with SQL Server Integration Services

Jason Strate

SQL Server MVP
Enterprise Consultant with Digineer
Working with SQL Server since 1997

feeds2.feedburner.com/StrateSql
twitter.com/StrateSQL

• Consolidate packages and deployment
• Use ForEachwith ADO Enumerator for non-file looping
• Expressions on connections increase flexibility of package
• Store config type info in tables for easy retrieval and looping

Add It Up – Analysis Services Aggregations

Craig Utley, Mentor with Solid Quality Mentors
–craig@solidq.com

LearnMicrosoftBI.com

• Hierarchies must be natural to create aggregations at various levels
  • This means creating attribute relationships
• ProcessFulland ProcessIndexesbuild indexes and aggregations
• ProcessUpdateperforms adds, updates, and deletes to a dimension table
  • If a change is detected, flexible aggregations are dropped
• ProcessAddonly adds new records so both flexible and rigid aggregations are kept

OLAP and Data Warehousing – Data Warehousing Solution Architecture (Part 2)

Avoiding Common Analysis Services Mistakes

Craig Utley, Mentor with Solid Quality Mentors
–craig@solidq.com

LearnMicrosoftBI.com

• Dimensions appear to be especially problematic for companies
• The first thing companies should do is correctlyidentify attribute relationships
  • Not identifying them is bad
  • Incorrectly identifying them is worse
• Attribute relationships with flexible relationship types can cause problems with non-unique attributes (eg. Date hierarchy)
• Decide when IgnoreUnrelatedDimensions should be true
• In MDX explicitly reference cells when possible
  • Products.Printersinstead of Dimensions(2).Printers
  • Products.Printersinstead of Products.CurrentMember

Live Session – DBA Survivor II

Thomas LaRock

http://thomaslarock.com/presentations

• Know your RAIDs.
• HA vs. DR – Two different things. Glad he is reminding folks of this!
• Networks – Don’t forget this can cause “performance” problems.
• DBA = Default Blame Accepter (I know Network admins that might argue about that.)
• Be Nice! – #1 rule?
• Email – DON’T DO THIS.  hehe
  • “I have never, nor will I now, tolerate your foolishness.”
  • “I am done with your useless babble.”
• Development
  • “A development server is a production server to a developer”
  • Ask them if it is OK to lock down that server, should fix that response.
  • Manage expectations
    • Be responsive AND responsible
      • Own success AND mistakes (Amen!)
    • Results, not effort
    • Tangible output
  • Get used to developers being needy – They are undo pressure to deliver products on time and under budget.
• Time Management
  • Get in a routine
  • To-Do List
  • Chunking – Write those 6 blog articles at once and schedule publication over the week.
  • Know when to say No

Popularity: 1% [?]