• MDX Between Start Date and End Date

    April 14th, 2013 in Analysis Services, Blog

    How do you use MDX to find the number of items between two dates, when the start date and end date are different role playing dimensions? I had an interesting question from Ricardo Santos on another frog-blog post this week (MDX Calculated Member spanning multiple date dimensions). I answered Ricardo in the post, but it was a good question which I thought deserved a full blog post on its own. So thanks to Ricardo for prompting this. The Scenario…

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  • Database Management PhD survey

    December 18th, 2012 in Blog, Community, SQL Server

    If you’re involved in database management, can you spare 20 minutes to complete a survey? Victoria Holt is studying for her PhD, and would very much appreciate it if you could help her out with her survey. Go on… Fill it in whilst you have a break over a cup of tea & a mince pie… Full in the survey here On behalf of Victoria, thanks

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  • SSIS Expression Editor and Tester

    December 6th, 2012 in Blog, Integration Services

    I stumbled upon a gem of a tool this morning, written by Darren Green (blog | twitter) of SQLBits & Bids Helper fame; the SSIS Expression Editor and Tester. Kudos to Darren, this is a great little tool for fine tuning and testing those complex SSIS expressions without having to keep running tests within SSIS. It’s downloadable with 3 versions, for SSIS 2005, 2008 & 2012, and doesn’t even need installing, it just runs as an…

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  • Querying dimension members in MDX

    November 30th, 2012 in Analysis Services, Blog

    Today we’re back looking at MDX with a quick how-to. How do you extract a list of dimension members using MDX? This could be used for example to populate a user interface/parameter of a report/dashboard. Let’s look at two scenarios; normal dimensions, and then hierarchies. All the queries here use the “Adventure Works DW 2008 R2” “Adventure Works” cube. Standard dimension attributes So how do we get a list of…

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  • Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

    October 5th, 2012 in Blog, Community, SQL Server

      I want to share with you some genius level work by Phil Quinn (blog | twitter), who is furthering the boundaries of SQL Server.   Phil has taken the spatial drawing code from an earlier Frog-blog and used it to create a fully functional Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock game, just using the power of SQL Server. Not even the brightest boffins at Microsoft could ever have imagined that SQL Server would be able to provide such an awesome…

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  • Find first order date in MDX

    September 3rd, 2012 in Analysis Services, Blog

    I had an interesting question the other day; “how do I find the date of the first order/activity for a given customer/employee/product etc in MDX”? Well you’ll be pleased to know that it’s pretty simple. The sample code bellow will work with the AdventureWorks DW 2008R2 cube. First of all we need to filter the date dimension to contain only those with orders. Then take the first item of the resulting set, then find its…

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  • Still time to register for SQL Saturday 162 in Cambridge

    August 28th, 2012 in Blog, Community

    Just a quick reminder, if you haven’t registered already then get yourself to the SQL Saturday website and register for the UK’s first ever SQL Saturday, in Cambridge on Sept 8th 2012. The presenter/session line-up is awesome – check out the schedule here. I’ll be presenting a talk at 3:50pm on a better way to load data warehouse dimensions. I’m also proud to say that Purple Frog are sponsoring the event. There…

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  • Speaking at SQL Saturday 162 in Cambridge

    August 1st, 2012 in Blog, Community

    I’m thrilled to have been selected to speak at the UK’s first SQL Saturday event – A big thank you to the organisers, I’ll already buzzing about it! SQL Saturday #162 is being held in the fabulous city of Cambridge, with two days of awesome content. Pre-Con Training Day: Friday 7th September 2012 Free SQL Saturday: Saturday 8th September 2012 Full details on the SQL Saturday website here. I’ll be reviving my talk…

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  • MSc Dissertation – Performance of Loading SCDs in SSIS

    July 20th, 2012 in Blog, Business Intelligence, Integration Services, SQL Server

    Well after 3.5 years, I’ve finally completed my MSc Business Intelligence – hoorah! And to reward the time, effort and increased grey hair, they saw fit to give me a merit as well. During the last year I’ve been writing a thesis investigating the performance characteristics of loading data into data warehouse dimensions. Specifically loading Type 2 SCDs using SSIS. For those who have followed the previous posts and my…

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  • SQLBits X Video available

    June 19th, 2012 in Blog, Business Intelligence, Community, Integration Services, SQL Server

    SQLBits X Video Now available The video of my talk at SQLBits X is now available on the SQLBits website here. The talk was focused on presenting the results of my MSc Business Intelligence dissertation, comparing the performance of different methods of using SSIS to load data warehouse dimensions, specifically type 2 SCDs. The talk also covers a comparison of the performance between traditional hard disks and solid state storage systems such as…

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