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 […]
Reblog: How I prepared myself for the MCSE certification
SQLKover update: this was one of the most popular posts on my old blog. It’s quite old now and SQL 2014 content has been added to some of the exams. Nonetheless, a lot of it is still valid today. Last week (this is a repost, so not actually last week but over 2 years ago) I […]
Nesting Aggregates with Window Functions
Recenty I was writing an article for MSSQLTips where I had to create a treemap (it will be published soon). As sample data, I used the different folders containing the drafts for all the tips I ever wrote. As measures, I have the number of kilobytes and the number of items per folder. An example: […]
Reblog: Slow source? Make your data flow buffers smaller!
Whoa whoah. Aren’t you supposed to increase your data flow buffer size in order to speed up your packages? If you have enough memory and you can process more rows at the same time because your buffer is larger, that’s what we want, right? Yes, this is confirmed by the old blog post Adjust buffer […]
Scripts and SSDT-BI 2013
Recently I tried to open a script component in SSDT-BI 2013. I was developing for SSIS 2014, so this means using Visual Studio 2013 (I explain in this blog post how I set this up using Visual Studio online). However, I got a message saying there was a compatibility issue with Visual Studio 2012. (this […]
SSIS Catalog – Path to backup file could not be determined
I was creating an SSIS catalog at a new project, but I was greeted with the following error message when I hit OK: The path to the catalog backup file could not be determined. Integration Services might not be installed on this server, or the user may not have the appropriate access permissions. My initial […]
SSDT-BI and Visual Studio Online
Recently I had to create a new business intelligence project at a client. However, there was no source control present. Because I like my code checked in somewhere – you never know if your laptop crashes or even get stolen – I decided to try out Visual Studio Online. It’s free for basic use. All […]