I’m starting a little series on some of the nice features/capabilities in Snowflake (the cloud data warehouse). In each part, I’ll highlight something that I think it’s interesting enough to share. It might be some SQL function that I’d really like to be in SQL Server, it might be something else. In the first part: […]
Snowflake Database – First Impressions
At my recent project I’ve had the pleasure of working with Snowflake database (no, not the modelling technique) for the first time. Snowflake is a native cloud data warehouse, which means it is built for the cloud from the ground up. It’s not a conversion of an existing database or appliance into a cloud model; […]
SSIS and Pentaho – A Quick Comparison
I’ve been working with SSIS for a decade now (all versions, 2005 right until 2017), but it’s been just until recently that I got my hands on Pentaho Data Integration (PDI). PDI is the ETL tool of the Pentaho suite and is maybe most commonly known as kettle. You’ve got an Enterprise edition (which ain’t […]
Book Review – Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE
Yes, you’re reading that right. A book not about the Microsoft BI stack. At a project, Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) was used as an ETL tool. To get to know this tool a little better, I bought the book Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE (Third Edition) by the author Maria Carina Roldán. For those of […]
Community Engagements Second Half of 2018 – It’s all about Biml
I have a couple of community engagements coming up in the second half of 2018 and I’d like to share an overview with you. Some might remember my Biml meetup session at the start of this year. Basically I turned this session into two talks: an introduction to Biml and a more advanced talk about […]
Book Review – Factfulness by Hans Rosling
I recently bought the book Factfulness – Ten Reasons we’re wrong about the world – And why things are better than you think by Hans Rosland (with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund). The book is a fascinating read and I recommend it to everyone. Not just people working with data. Not just journalists. Not […]
Installing SSDT for Visual Studio 2017
I had SSDT for VS 2017 installed some time ago, but due to some issues I had to uninstall it. I also have SSDT for VS 2015 installed, as an add-on in Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise (because that’s the only way to get TFS working in VS 2015). I tried to re-install SSDT 2017 (stand-alone […]
Introduction to Biml – Webinar
On Thursday June 7th I’ll be giving a webinar for MSSQLTips.com (7PM UTC). The topic is Introduction to Biml – Generating your SSIS packages from scratch. In this webinar, I’ll introduce the Biml language and its concepts and show you how you can generate multiple SSIS packages using metadata. The abstract: Working on your 20th staging […]
Techorama 2018 Session Materials
Techorama 2018 is over, sadly enough. It was a great conference: lots of awesome speakers and sessions and very nicely organized. Big thanks to the organizers, sponsors and attendees of course. My session on data modeling in self-service BI went really well (but I had some time left at the end). I promised to share […]
Issue while using SQLCompare against Azure SQL DB
I’ve encountered an issue while trying to compare a local SQL Server database against an Azure SQL DB using Redgate SQLCompare. When trying to specify my credentials, I got the following error: “Unable to load adalsql.ddl”. Following that link actually leads you to a helpful page, where you can download the Active Directory Authentication Library […]