May 2008 - Posts

• SQL Saturday #4 in Orlando Between Techeds

  If you're going to be in the Orlando area around the TechEd timeframe, I'll be doing speaking at SQL Saturday #4. On Saturday, June 7th, I'll be doing a session on what's new in SQL Server 2008 and on Sunday, I'll be doing a half-day session on how to implement BI with SQL Server 2005. SQL Saturday will be at the Orlando Convention Center between the two TechEd events and is free to attend. We're expecting about 1,200 attendees and I'm only one of many sessions. You can see all the sessions and register at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/. Posted May 25 2008, 05:12 PM by Brian Knight with no comments Filed under: SQL Saturday

• Speaking at Midlands PASS May Meeting

  Are you in Columbia, SC or Charlotte? If so, I hope to see you at the Midlands PASS meeting on the 27th of May. Tuesday, May 27, 2008 Speaker: SQL Server MVP Brian Knight The Midlands PASS chapter will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, May 27, 2008, to host SQL Server MVP Brian Knight. I will be giving a presentation on Data Mining using SQL Server. The meeting will once again be held at Training Concepts off of Berryhill Road. We will begin our meet and greet time at 6:15 PM as usual and start the presentation between 6:30 and 6:45 PM. I will send out an agenda next week. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would be interested in attending. If you plan on attending, please RSVP (BKelley{AT}AgFirst.com) (replace {AT} with @) as soon as possible so we can ensure we have enough space and food. -- Brian Knight Posted May 15 2008, 01:33 PM by Brian Knight with no comments Filed under: speaking engagements

• SSIS Case Sensitivity

  One of the most frustrating learning curves for a DBA going to SSIS is the case sensitivity of the environment. Many developers are quite used to this due to option explicit .NET programming languages. The case sensitivity can in some cases create behavior that is not expected and may give you bad results if you're not careful. One such example is with the Lookup Transform, where comparisons against the cache are case sensitive. If you do not expect this, you may have a miss in a match that is actually a hit. To resolve this, you may have to use an UPPER or LOWER function to make everything upper or lower case. You can also create a new column in the data flow that has the data as UPPER by the use of a Derived Column Transform. There are many options there keep in mind. In the Lookup Transform, you can do upper case the data by changing the SQL query as shown below if the City column is the one where the comparison is happening. The expression language is also case sensitive. Let's take the conditional logic as shown below: STATE == "FL" ? "Florida" : STATE If the state of "Fl" comes through, it will not qualify to be changed to "Florida". Instead, you must make a like comparison as shown below: UPPER(STATE) == "FL" ? "Florida" : STATE Additionally, a more obvious case sensitive issue is with variables. All variables, whether in expressions or a script component are case sensitive.   -- Brian Knight Posted May 08 2008, 08:11 PM by Brian Knight with 1 comment(s) Filed under: SSIS

• SQL Saturday #3 Jacksonville Recap

  I'm still coming down from my high of hosting my first SQL Saturday in Jacksonville at University of North Florida. We had almost 400 people registered and nearly 300 came on the day of the event. The 20 volunteers we had did an amazing job of handling the rush and the day in general. We also had 37 total sessions by 28 national and regional speakers. If you attended SQL Saturday #3, expect to receive an email from us soon with the various slide decks. Since space was slightly cramped in the building, we had a bit of a big geek hippy picnic in the courtyard shade. It was a neat sight to see all the introverted geeks, socializing. What amazed me most was that we had 100 people at the after event with a live band and pool tables. We had planned on seeing maybe 50-60 there!    As we read the evals, it seems our biggest lessons learned was to give better directions to the facility but other than that, attendees had a fantastic time. Tim Mitchell from Dallas was one of the speakers and attendees and was kind enough to post almost 100 pictures from his SQL Saturday experience. You'll see pictures that follow the order of: registration, sessions, lunch, closing ceremony and the after event. http://tim-mitchell.spaces.live.com/   The fanatic SQL Server winner of the day must be Rodney, who has added a SQL tattoo on his left arm.     Thanks to all the sponsors, volunteers, speakers and attendees that made this day possible.   --Brian Knight Posted May 06 2008, 08:46 AM by Brian Knight with no comments Filed under: SQL Server 2008, SQL Saturday