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T-SQL Group By ALL
When you type a T-SQL Query, you often want to group the data. Today I came across a neat trick for grouping: the GROUP BY ALL option. It may be a bit hard to explain what it ...
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Excel connectors and 64-bit
The SSIS Excel connector is a special connector that does not have many configuration options, but does exactly what it should do: read data from an Excel tab and write it back into ...
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Using a variable in an OLE-DB Source (SSIS)
In Integration Services you may want to build the SQL in your Data Flow Task dynamically by using a variable. To get this done, you need a trick.
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Finding the value of a variable in SSIS
SSIS has a number of debugging tools. The one I could not find myself was a tool to trace variable values at runtime. A quick search on the internet did wonders.
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A tool to help you find KPIs
A colleague of mine recently gave me a tip for a website where you can find KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for important business processes.
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How do I back up my database?
This article describes how you can script a Microsoft SQL Server database. This script holds the complete database structure and all objects in the database, such as functions and Stored ...
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How do I make a date dimension?
Date dimensions are very useful. With a date dimension / date table you can look up for any date which week it falls in, which year, which month, whether it is a public holiday ...
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How do I back up my SSRS report as RDL
The question I asked myself today: how can I make a backup of a Reporting Services report that is already deployed on the Report Server?
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Custom Logging in SSIS
Logging in SSIS (Integration Services) is a useful method that you should build into every package by default. With logging you can always look up (if needed) what time packages were ...
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BIDS Helper
The Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS for short) is normally used to develop Microsoft BI software. There is room for improvement everywhere, and in this case the BIDS ...
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Analysis Services Enterprise vs Standard
When a Microsoft Analysis environment has several servers with different editions, you always have to weigh how you keep the servers in sync with each other.
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Analysis Services, Reporting and Excel 2007
I am currently working on a project that implements SQL Server 2005 (64-bit), Analysis & Reporting Services plus Excel 2007. The combination of Analysis and Excel offers very good options ...
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SSRS Best Practice I - Limit datasets
In SQL Server Reporting Services you can create datasets. One of the best practices is to keep these datasets to a minimum, preferably just 1. As soon as someone ever has to ...
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Subtotal Bold in a Matrix
As soon as you want to make the subtotals in a matrix bold or give them a different colour, you will notice that this does not work well. You cannot just make the word "Total" bold but will have to take one extra ...
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Starting and stopping SQL Server Services
Jorg Klein found a smart way to stop and restart all SQL Server Services in 1 step. This saves a lot of time, because you no longer have to do it by hand!
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Backing up Reporting Services Data
All the data for the reports in your report manager is stored in the Reportserver database. So it is wise to make a backup of this database every day.
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Recursive Query with CTE II
You can think of a number of scenarios where running a recursive query can be the answer. This example covers a recursive query on a department table, so that an ...
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Business Rules in the Data Warehouse
As the name says, Business Rules are rules that apply to a company. Anyone with common sense can come up with Business Rules. In Data Warehousing you also deal with Business ...
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Column Usage in Views
In SQL Server 2005 you can see which columns and which tables a View uses. There is a System-View in every database for this. This view is created automatically ...
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Searching for text in SSIS packages
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) you can search the content of the packages. This is useful when you want to know whether a column is used in a source or destination. You can ...
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Date calculations
In SQL Server 2005 you can do date calculations in several ways. SQL Server 2005 has several functions you can use when you work with dates. This article describes a number of ...
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Finding duplicate rows
Every row in a table is identified by a primary key. Now and then the key occurs twice in your system. That should not happen. With this simple query you can ...
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Query Active Directory
It can be useful to include data from your Active Directory (AD) in your data warehouse. In my case it was useful because the customer wanted to see whether a user who had left the company still ...
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The selected report is not ready for viewing
Lately I have often been annoyed by the following error message: The selected report is not ready for viewing. The report is still being rendered or a report snapshot is not available. ...
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Problems when exporting to Excel
When you make a report in Reporting Services, you often want to export it to Excel. Reporting Services quite often messes up the layout. For example, it often inserts columns ...
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