I have been meaning to post this for a while, but you know how work gets in the way….

This came out in some of the Microsoft newsletters and as a poster in SQL Server magazine: www.getonthecase.com

The sessions offered online are as follows:

• Working with asynchronous data in SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 and ADO.Net entity framework integration
• Uncovering T-SQL on SQL Server 2008
• Deploying managed code to SQL Server 2008
• Communicating with SQL Server 2008 using HTTP
• Working with unstructured data in SQL Server 2008
• Developing for SQL Server 2008 using Visual Studio
• Working with SQL Server 2008 and disconnected clients

For anyone who loves web design, the site is also an incredibly cool exhibit of SilverLight 2.0 programming.

In my post, Why use aliases?, I spoke in favor of using a certain syntax in your SQL programming, particularly because SQL Server 2008 gives you almost no reason not to with integrated Intellisense.

One little note for those who may have run into a frustration while developing – Intellisense in SQL 2008 does not always refresh timely. This can be particularly annoying if you are in the middle of developing, make some schema changes and then try to write a script – intelllisense will not prompt you with the correct values, or tell you that objects and schemas do not exist.

Only two known ways to resolve this for now:

• Main Menu: Edit > Intellisense > Refresh Local Cache
• Or, shortcut keys: CTRL + Shift + R

This all started off in trying to help out a fellow SSIS enthusiast, and now I have made a complete project as a sample….. catch the MSDN forum thread here.

There are many reasons why you would want to remap source columns to destination at runtime – I would not necessarily recommend this type of solution for some of your larger and more impactful data imports, but there are many cases where being able to modify the mapping metadata at runtime can be incredibly useful.

I have posted the project example in the files directory on my blog, you can download the Visual Studio 2008 project here – keep in mind that I did this in VS 2008 Team System Architecture Edition, so if you don't have this version, then you might have an issue with the unit test project attached.

This should not pose a problem for many though, as the only reason I threw the unit test in there was to provide a simple and lazy way to call into the class and perform the remapping.

This example demonstrates the following:

• Load an existing SSIS package and indentify the source and destination components
• Instantiate the source and destination components to read their column metadata
• Remap a source column to a destination column
• Save the modified SSIS package

When you open the SSISExamples solution, build it, and then either copy the DynamicRemap.dtsx file from the bin directory to your c:\ root or modify the PackageToLoad string in the CreatePackage class.

Once you call into the CreateAndRunPackage method, you will end up with a copy of the package in your root named PackageModified.dtsx.

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions. I'll try to make a few improvements to the example when I have free time over the coming holiday, but for now, enjoy!

I've been trying to be a good citizen and post more in the SQL Server section of the MSDN forums, and so I came across a question in the SQL Server > SSIS section about start-up performance that made me realize not a lot of people are aware of how a package initially executes.

Since Kirk Haselden was my original source for some of this information so I will point to his post, Caching in The SSIS Service, for anyone to reference.