Todd McDermid's Blog

WOOO! OK - maybe too much of a celebration... and I do have meatier topics in the article pipeline.  However, I just stumbled across a feature in SSIS that I didn't realize had been included ...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/12/ssis-data-flow-sequence-containers-are.html

It's been a while, but since I now get to play with SQL 2016 full time, I have new things to talk about!  One of major difficulties that any technology pro has to deal with is integrating diffe...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/10/reading-sharepoint-2007-list-from-ssis.html

Here's a quick hit for a Monday morning... Integration Services logging levels can definitely be set up such that you can record when variables change value.  It's not the simplest, and involve...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/10/log-ssis-variable-values-when-you-want.html

Control Flow Package Parts are a new feature in Microsoft SQL Server 2016 that attempts to enable code reuse within SQL Server Integration Services packages.  The intent is great, but like wi...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/10/control-flow-package-parts-in-ssis-2016.html

This isn't my usual stomping grounds - I'm your typical developer: security isn't a focus, and if I'm the one doing it, I wouldn't trust it either.  Get a real security professional involved if ...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/06/alwaysencrypted-in-sql-2016.html

Fantastic news from the SSIS team at Microsoft.  After a decade of work, they've been able to address all the bugs and features that somehow ranked higher than this.  This problem is fixed ! T...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2016/04/finding-column-name-for-errorcolumn.html

One of the challenges that I've worked on in the past months involved adapting our technical architecture to address issues exposed by business re-engineering.  The BI group at CHC used to a...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2015/08/consolidating-multiple-data-marts.html

A great learning and networking event comes back to Vancouver just in time to regroup about SQL Server 2016.  Don't pass up the opportunity to hear from some of the best expert speakers from a...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2015/06/sql-saturday-vancouver-june-27-2015.html

I should probably forward this to the Daily WTF (I'm a dedicated reader) - but we'll see how well the story tells here, with an audience that has a passing knowledge of SQL Server. As part of m...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2015/06/adventures-in-ssas-writeback.html

It hasn't happened often with me - I've just changed employers.  Farewell to Metrie - I spent a long time there, worked with fantastic colleagues, and as I hope this blog has shown... I learned...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-next-chapter.html

It's been too quiet around here... And that's all on me.  You see, I've been hunting rabbits - the elusive kind - a specific breed called "analytic culture" which requires a ton of focus, and...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2014/08/professional-update-mid-2014.html

Here's a non-NDA tidbit from the Microsoft MVP Summit - I think you'll find it quite useful.  I'm going to go through my old posts to see if I can find places to retrofit with this cool little e...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2014/08/visualizing-data-on-web.html

There are times when you know a data flow is sorted in Integration Services, but SSIS doesn't know this fact.  For example, you may have data coming out of a Derived Column or synchronous Script...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2014/08/imposing-sort-order-on-already-sorted.html

If you're looking to increase the performance of your SSIS packages like I am, (and you should be,) then you'll know about the Balanced Data Distributor component that Microsoft released a coupl...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2014/08/poor-mans-balanced-data-distributor.html

First - it's been a while since I've posted. I have quite a few articles in the pipe, but they're "heavier", so take longer to flesh out and publish. I thought I'd start the ball rolling by comme...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2013/04/data-explorer-rocks-lets-get-enterprise.html

I'll warn you straight off that this is an advanced technique for a fairly small use case - it is NOT a "try this for all data flow performance problems" type of technique.  (Much like the typi...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/10/data-flow-optimization-collapse-sparse.html

Back in 2007, Simon Sabin published a file viewer for SSIS RAW files .  Of course, that was for Integration Services 2005.  Simon Trigona, one of my colleagues at Moulding and Millwork, recentl...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/10/ssis-raw-file-viewer-20082008r2.html

The season is about to change for all of us, but this past Summer has been quite an eventful one for me.  I won't bore you all with the details, but there are a few things I think will be of in...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-only-thing-constant-is-change.html

Reading Excel data isn't easy.  It should be, but there's a lot of unfortunate barriers in the way that I've discussed before.  They boil down to one main reason: Excel wasn't created for IT, i...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/07/reading-excel-into-ssis-via-openxml.html

This post should have been made a couple months ago so that my legions of rabid fans could have lined up to... yeah, OK - I'm not fooling anybody, I know.  But for those that ARE signed up to D...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/05/presenting-at-vancouver-devteach.html

There are some things that we do in one SQL Server tool, but can't seem to figure out how to do in another.  One of those for you might be the LIKE keyword in T-SQL.  LIKE is fairly powerful i...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/05/basic-ssis-equivalents-to-t-sqls-like.html

An recurring issue with Integration Services packages that read or write to file systems is permissions issues.  It's quite difficult to have a package run properly when it can't see the source ...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/05/effective-permissions-tool-is-handy.html

In some database designs, you may encounter SQL Server columns with a TIMESTAMP or ROWVERSION data type.  What are these, and how do you deal with them in SQL Server Integration  Services? Time...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-use-t-sql-timestamp-rowversion.html

Excel 2010 (and presumably the next version of Excel) have taken some security precautions with regards to macros in Excel files.  If a spreadsheet has macros in it, you can't save it as an XLSX...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/04/quick-reference-how-do-i-read-excel.html

As regular readers will know, I've got a few custom components for SQL Server Integration Services under my belt, some of which I've published at CodePlex .  As I was working with one of the com...

http://toddmcdermid.blogspot.com/2012/04/quick-tip-custom-component-performance.html