Slides and demos for my hdc08omaha talks are now available for download from http://tinyurl.com/5oykgj Thanks to all who attended!

Yesterday I drove down from Sioux Falls to Omaha so that I could catch a talk being given by Sudhir Gajre to the Omaha SQL Server/BI Interest Group. I first got to know Sudhir when he, I and Luke Schollmeyer were restarting a SQL Server Users Group in Omaha. Sudhir is a stud at SQL Server performance tuning and helped write one of the best papers ...

Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen master who came America in 1959, once wrote that ''in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.'' This definitely seems to be to of SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS). But not always in a good way. If you are coming to Integration Services from SQL Server 2000's Data ...

One of the first tasks we must do well as SSIS developers is really understand our source data. That seems rather obvious but it when we fail to do this task well, we frequently end up having to re-plan, re-work and re-do the packages we have designed. Generally speaking there are five facets to data that we need to have correct understanding of ...

Hello world and yes, I am alive. I have finally caught up enough to begin regularly blogging about SQL Server again. It is good to be back! As you may know, I will be giving a talk at this year's Heartland Developers' Conference. (http://www.heartlanddc.com) My presentation in entitled ''What the SSIS Masters Know.'' I picked this topic since I ...