Douglas Laudenschlager

See all the new SSIS articles, videos, & samples from Microsoft

2008-11-18T22:16:00Z

Have you seen all the recent articles, videos, & samples for Integration Services? In the future, we hope to offer you an RSS feed for this purpose, but we're not there yet. For now, I hope that you find this list useful, especially since it was painfully tedious to create! (Note: When I look at this blog posting in Internet Explorer, I get an unexpected warning from the IE Phishing filter...probably because of all the hyperlinks set to open in a new window. I can reassure you that the only...(read more)

Your vote on Microsoft Connect influenced SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1

2008-11-14T23:22:00Z

Your vote counts on Microsoft Connect! The SQL Server product team looked closely at Connect bugs from our customers to plan the fixes that will be included in SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1. After setting aside feature requests (DCRs), they started at the top of bugs with the most votes, and worked their way down (in number of votes) until they reached the limit of what can realistically be fixed in time for SP1. It was time and resources that decided the number of bugs to fix, not a predetermined...(read more)

Add logging to the Data Profiling Task

2008-11-11T22:27:00Z

Yesterday I was on a call where we looked at a few usability requests for the Data Profiling Task that didn't make it into RTM. One such request was task-specific logging. Surprise! The attentive developer at Microsoft Research had added it at the last moment, and few people had noticed. So this feature is not mentioned in BOL. Enabling task-specific logging for the Data Profiling task There's a DataProfilingTaskTrace logging event that's unique to this task that you want to enable, to...(read more)

Learn more about using Change Data Capture (CDC) in SSIS 2008

2008-11-11T00:11:00Z

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise includes the new Change Data Capture feature, or CDC, largely intended for use by ETL developers performing incremental loads of a data warehouse. With CDC, you can easily identify rows that have been inserted, updated, or deleted -- no more need for complex queries and other custom solutions! The other day I promised links to some resources, and now they're finally all online. Try the 2 new end-to-end samples on Codeplex Sandra Ward, the developer of CDC, has done...(read more)

InfoWorld praises Lookup caching, CDC in SSIS 2008

2008-11-05T18:03:00Z

Read what Sean McCown of InfoWord says about the benefits of Lookup caching and Change Data Capture for the enterprise. "Microsoft has taken some big steps to ensure that SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services) can compete directly with competitors such as Informatica by offering lookup caching and CDC. ...both lookup caching and CDC can improve the speed of loads by orders of magnitude." InfoWorld praises Lookup caching, CDC in SSIS 2008 How can you learn more about the new features in...(read more)

Check out the new Integration Services portal page on MSDN

2008-11-04T00:31:00Z

When you visit the Integration Services page on MSDN or TechNet, you now get fresh and useful links that include community content, rather than a stale set of links to Books Online topics. Here on the Integration Services team, we're happy to be the first SQL Server feature to showcase the new look. Please check it out! SQL Server 2008 – Integration Services on MSDN This page is for you and fellow ETL developers. Use the Feedback link in the upper right to tell us what you like and don't...(read more)

ETL in the cloud, or just for the cloud?

2008-10-27T21:48:00Z

Lots of comments today about PDC and the Microsoft executives discussing Windows Azure, the new platform for cloud computing. "Everyone" - that is, Matthew Roche and Jamie Thomson - noticed (without even being present!) the "ETL" on Bob Muglia's slide, which it's now my turn to borrow: Do folks really want ETL *in* the cloud? That will be interesting to see. If you're interested in ETL *to or from* the cloud today, don't miss the SQL Server Data Services Connectors...(read more)

Didn't make it to the recent Microsoft BI Conference?

2008-10-21T23:33:00Z

Well, you saved a ton of money, but missed a lot of fascinating presentations. Each hour brought another panicked decision over which talk to choose, from the several available tracks. (Except when Donald Farmer's title promised to make me "cool, smart, and sexy" by hearing about the Data Mining Add-ins for Excel.) But all is not lost! Content from many of the Integration Services presentations is, or will soon be, available... Official SSIS team blogger Matt Masson presented on "...(read more)

MSDN publishes first 2 articles by Integration Services product vendors

2008-10-21T23:14:00Z

MSDN/TechNet has just published 2 new articles by third-party vendors of commercial products that work with, or complement, SQL Server Integration Services. In Extending Integration Services with the Script Task and Script Task Plus , Ivan Peev of CozyRoc talks about the built-in Script task, then discusses the additional features provided by Script Task Plus, a component that's included in the SSIS+ library from CozyRoc. For example, Script Task Plus lets you reuse the same script easily in...(read more)

Connectors now available for SAP BI, Oracle, and Teradata

2008-10-21T23:03:00Z

Both of the promised post-RTM packages of connectors for use with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise and Developer are now available for download, since last Friday's release of the October Feature Pack that contains the SAP BI connector. Each set consists of a connection manager, source, and destination, and is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. In both cases, Microsoft took advantage of the existing expertise of third-party companies to develop these high-performance connectivity components...(read more)

New 10-minute how-to videos on Integration Services

2008-10-16T18:30:00Z

The Integration Services documentation team at Microsoft recently published its very first batch of 10-minute how-to videos. We hope that beginning to intermediate users will find these useful, and we're pleased to be taking some first steps beyond the written word of BOL. You can find the entire list of 5 Integration Services and 3 Analysis Services videos at this MSDN page for SQL Server Videos . The Integration Services videos are: Creating a Basic Package (SQL Server Video) (This could have...(read more)

Setting an expression dynamically

2008-10-11T23:53:00Z

Former Integration Services developer Michael Entin recently responded to an interesting question on the internal SSIS discussion list at Microsoft. The user was asking: How can I assign the expression [in this case, for the Derived Column transformation] dynamically at run time? The intuitive but less-than-obvious answer is...use an expression to set the expression! This lets you put your expression in a string variable such as @User::DerivationRule , and assign that by using an expression to the...(read more)

The first Integration Services 2008 book is now available

2008-10-09T22:53:00Z

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470247959/ Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services by SQL Server MVPs Brian Knight and Erik Veerman, our own broadly smiling Grant Dickinson, and industry experts Douglas Hinson and Darren Herbold At this writing, US $31.49 on Amazon.com and in stock. Although this is the 2008 update to the 2005 version of the book, it has been massively updated with new material. It has also been carefully tech reviewed by yours truly and several other members...(read more)

New "social bookmarking" features on MSDN & TechNet

2008-09-10T17:47:00Z

I thought you might want to take a look at this blog posting - Launched: Social Bookmarking V1 on MSDN and TechNet - although I haven't had the leisure to explore it yet myself. The stated goal is: " These new sites, which have been available in preview since May 2008, make it easy for Microsoft's enormous technical community to help each other discover the best resources on any topic from across the web. " The documentation team is frequently and painfully reminded that discoverability...(read more)

New MSDN articles on Integration Services deployment and performance

2008-09-03T17:41:00Z

The Microsoft MVPs and consultants who spend every day implementing real-world solutions with SQL Server Integration Services gain a wealth of practical knowledge that even the development team can't match. So we're very pleased to announce a first batch of articles in the MSDN Library from these experts, on the pressing issues of package deployment and performance. These aren't "buy our product" or "admire our benchmarks" whitepapers...these are bundles of best practices...(read more)