The pie chart should be avoided at all costs. Why? you can only display a limited number of slices (although that doesn’t really stop people from creating pie charts with dozens of slices) they take up a lot of space the human brain cannot easily compare slices based on radial areas. We’re better in comparing […]
Author: Koen Verbeeck
Koen Verbeeck is a Microsoft Business Intelligence consultant at AE, helping clients to get insight in their data. Koen has a comprehensive knowledge of the SQL Server BI stack, with a particular love for Integration Services. He's also a speaker at various conferences.
Reblog: The Magic Alt Button
SQLKover update: I love this trick! I use it daily, no kidding (except in weekends). Want to see it in live action? You can watch my MSSQLTips.com webcast on-demand where I demonstrate this trick. Start watching at around minute 38. Lately I have been using more and more the awesomeness of the Alt-button in SQL Server […]
MDS 2016 CTP 2.3: tiles greyed out in Manager
I’m toying around with MDS 2016 CTP 2.3 in preparation of my SQLServerDays session about what is new for BI in SQL Server 2016. I uploaded the sample models into MDS and I opened up Master Data Manager in Internet Explorer to try out some of the new features. The Manager has received a make-over […]
The SSDT Evolution
When you are developing for the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack, you always needed Visual Studio for your business intelligence (SSIS, SSAS & SSRS) projects. If you have a full blown Visual Studio installation, you needed the BI templates; if you didn’t have Visual Studio (or the right version), you would install a shell that could […]
Webinar – SSIS Best Practices and Tuning Tips
I’ll be giving an SSIS webinar for MSSQLTips.com on Tuesday 15th September 2015. The title is SQL Server Integration Services Best Practices and Tuning Tips and its abstract goes like this: Did you ever inherited a slow running un-maintainable mess of an SSIS package? Or do you want to knock up your SSIS developing skills […]
Report Builder Changes in SQL Server 2016
As a lot of features, Report Builder will improve as well in SQL Server 2016. At the moment of writing CTP 2.3 has been released and Report Builder has the following changes: more up-to date look ‘n feel high dpi in the preview HTML5 support Screenshot of the look ‘n feel: That’s right: away with baby-blue and enter […]
SSIS – Unexpected Termination
I was toying around with the new SQL Server 2016 CTP release and I wanted to run a few SSIS packages to test out the new logging levels. However, everytime I ran a package in the SSIS catalog, it ended with the dreaded “unexpected termination” message. In such a case, nothing is logged to the catalog, so […]
Nominated for Author of the Year 2015
I have the great pleasure to announce that I have been nominated for the “Author of the Year 2015” award at the MSSQLTips website. This means however I have to persuade people to vote for me, hence this blog post I received the award last year, so I have a title to defend! You can vote for […]
SQL 2016 CTP 2.3 has been released
A new monthly release of the SQL Server 2016 preview has been released: CTP 2.3. You can find the download here (the official SQL Server 2016 page currently still links to CTP 2.2). There isn’t any official documentation out yet describing which features have been added or improved, but thanks to Dutch MVP Joost (blog | […]
Reblog: Force installation of 64-bit ACE OLE DB provider
Anyone working with SSIS and Excel probably had the following issue: you are creating an SSIS package using an Excel file in BIDS/SSDT – which is a 32-bit application – and when you try to run the package, it crashes. This is easily fixed by setting the project property Run64BitRuntime to False. The package now […]