This Week I Have Been Mostly Listening To...

Little Death - Pete & the Pirates

Data Dude 2008

It's finally been released.

Get it from here for all of your database development delights. You will of course have to uninstall any previous CTP previous versions you have but details of what it will or won't upgrade can be found here.

Attribute Processing Errors

Just something to remind myself that when processing a dimension attribute make sure that there are no NULL's in addition to empty strings. One or the other is ok but when you start having both in an attribute key you will get processing errors as Analysis Services will do whatever it does and effectively make them the same value therefore you will get duplicate key problems.

This Week I Have Been Mostly Listening To...

Another Late Night Tale - Matt Helders

It's me again.....

Somebody asked me yesterday if I'd been updating this recently and of course I haven't as I'm a slacker so I thought I start the process off again by posting about one of my fave subjects and that's that's the continued battle 32bit / 64bit mixed environments.

I'm currently working on a real life SQL Server 2008 project with all the bells and whistles and everything so we have VS 2008 in the mix as well. Now let me set the stage....

Dev server = 64 bit

SQL Server = 64 bit

Source Database = doesn't matter (I think)

Now I'm going through a firewall so I've had to setup an alias in the configuration manager so I can specify the port of the instance of SQL server that is my source database. In there you have 32 bit and 64 bit configurations so because I'm setting everything up to make sure I can talk with the server I've gone through management studio.

SQL Server Management Studio connects fine as I'm guessing it's a 32bit process and I've set up an alias in the 32bit bucket. I can also create a SSIS package that connects to my destination server, is able to browse the source data, and will execute from the dtexecui application. But what can't I do, well for starters I can't debug as I get an error telling me that it cannot connect to the source database.

Now I create an alias in the 64bit configuration bucket and now I can debug. So what else can I do? Well next thing is to set the project property Run64bitRuntime to false and try to debug with the 64bit alias deleted. Guess what, it runs.

So the moral of the story is don't expect everything to work nicely for you out of the box all of time even if you're in a single technology environment.

Things you should remember but kind of forgot that then come back and bite you on the arse that make you just want to curl up into a little ball and cry out for mommy..... Part 1..!

In SSIS lookup component is case sensitive....!

Apologies about the picture. Looks like my link got hijacked. It has been removed

This Week I Have Been Mostly erm... Playing...

Say no more......

What's Been Going On The Last Few Months...

I have been asked by a few people what I'm doing lately and I have been a bit vague on the details not because I want to hide away but because I really haven't been too clear on that subject myself.

Anyway here's a short update.

I left Edenbrook back at the end of February to do some bits and pieces (still MS BI stuff) for myself which has gone quite well, I'm now working on some other projects that will hopefully see the light of day over the next few months. I dropped out of the consulting game really because I decided to spend more time at home with the family and less time in hotels in various parts of the country.

The hobbies are the same with the addition of Tennis which I've taken up as I'm not allowed to play football anymore :( and any spare time is being taken up tearing it up in Liberty City.

I shall still be going to the V festival this year at Hylands Park as they appear to have pulled their finger out and got what appears to be their best line up in years, although Glastonbury having Jay Z seems to have helped with that.

I don't do Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, or any of the other so don't think me rude for not replying to friend requests etc on there. I may change my mind but then again I might not. I want a 3G iPhone, a new laptop and a quad core PC for doing all the stuff I do at home.

Oh and I went to the Natural History museum yesterday. My daughter and I thoroughly enjoyed it and here is a picture from our day.......

Apparently the Blue Whale is a lot sleeker than that but when they built this no one had actually ever seen one swimming....!

This Week I Have Been Mostly Listening To...

The Duke Spirit - Neptune

This Week I Have Been Mostly Listening To...

Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim