December has flown by so far and I have not been able to post a single thing! Looking back, I am actually surprised I squeezed out four posts last month – hectic is one word that can be used to describe my current project schedule. What is that phrase, the light in the tunnel is either the end or the train…..

It is good to be busy, particularly with everything that is going on – unfortunately for my blog, my recent work (past 7 months) has had nothing to do with SQL Server, SSIS, BI.. anything, so….

I am enjoying the in and outs of WCF and programming for physical devices (not truly low level, otherwise I would be going crazy). All in all, I have been working with some fantastic people and entirely stretching out my mind to work on subject areas I otherwise would not be engaged in at all.

If nothing, I have been picking up a few good bookmarks here and there related to my true interest, one that I have been sharing recently is this best practices guideline for T-SQL development, which, thankfully, is a recent posting written with SQL 2005/2008 in mind.

For those of you who either attended the BI or have been following the what was presented, labs from the Training room onsite are now starting to trickle out. Two of them related to PerformancePoint and Project Server can be found here:

1. Enterprise Project Management and Data Visualization using Microsoft BI Tools and Solutions
2. Performance Management Using Project Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server 2007

Happy holidays to everyone! I'll get this out of the way now just in case I don't emerge until January!!

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.

I am not addicted to text messaging. I was talked into using FaceBook and found out that two of my high school teachers are more active on the site than I am.

I love getting cards or real mail. I don't own a game system except for one that was passed down to me and is currently sitting unplugged, unused.

We have one T.V. with no cable, just PBS over the antenna.

It's not that I am slow to adapt, or painstakingly deliberate – I just don't feel the need to be inundated day in and day out with information, much of it which has little to nothing to do with the decisions I need to make.

Why bring this up? I'm not going to bore you with a personal diatribe about modern technology, but rather make a point about information systems and how we need to be careful in our decisions.

One of the points I get clients to hammer out detail on when putting into place any level of reporting/analytics is how they will respond to the data once they get – what are the methods and governances you will have around the metrics once you start seeing them? One of my favorite stories is of a call center manager who was set to fire half of his staff due to returns or exchanges of computer products, until we pointed out to him he needed to look at the year over year context to understand that this was a normal consumer cycle and that they were actually doing better than the year before.

This is a cogent point all the more given our current economic state – we are not required to have an immediate reaction to every action that occurs. We (the market and our government) did not have a planned method for response to these events – if you do not have a plan or understanding of why the needle tips, and what to do when it does, then you put yourself in danger with any immediate response to that moving gauge.

I get a small chuckle out of everyone misquoting Milton Friedman when it comes to the Great Depression and trying to fit his statement into current context.

He did place a lot of blame on the Fed for contracting the money supply during a time when banks needed liquidity, but if you understand more of Friedman and his advocacy for a free market, then you cannot place his thinking next to the decisions guiding the "bailout".

Friedman was a very deliberate person and a brilliant economist (gross understatement). With all the information we now have at hand, much more data and coming in much more timely, there is the opportunity to pick a more measured path for the economy.

So what does this have to do with being old fashioned? Maybe it's just my weird thought pattern for the day, but I believe that we haven't learned as a society what to do with, and how to react to the amount of information we are given every minute of the day. Stocks fluctuate intraday for no apparent reason other than they have a high "news" index on Google or Yahoo!; an industry becomes hot overnight because it gets featured in some trade publication for some minor purpose, and then the story copied over and over -- or, one of my favorites about United Airlines and a mistake in publishing a story that plunged the stock over 75% in one day.

I guess that I am old fashioned in that I like to get all the facts before making a decision – it's not to say that I don't make up my mind quickly on a great many things, but often I can rely on either experience or an accumulation of points before that juncture that allow me to pick (hopefully) the best option before me.

I think something I'll use to underline this point: is there any day trader (technical investor) out there that can compete with Warren Buffet (value investor)?

It is important that we, as I/T professionals, push our clients to consider the facts, plan for excellence, plan for the long term, and to do this, we need to help them understand the repercussions of the information they will be receiving from the systems we put in place.

Thoughts, examples? Please feel free to comment or e-mail me.