In his article Healthcare's Big Problem With Little Data, author Dan Munro raises salient points about the state of health-related data. Electronic Health Records (EHR) were promoted as the end-all-be-all solution for the industry – a standardization that, I suppose, many thought would organically and naturally occur, stabilize, and be ...

Three days ago I posted What would a cloud-based ETL tool look like? where I wondered out loud about the sorts of tools data integration dudes like myself would be using in the future. I got some good feedback and already have a list of “stuff” to go and look at including: Boomi – They claim 1million cloud integrations (whatever one of those ...

Given that “moving data to the cloud” is, rightly or wrongly, currently in vogue in our industry I have to think that pretty soon there will be a glaring need for tools that help us to move data between these heterogeneous sources – a cloud-based ETL tool for cloud-based data if you will. Perhaps such a thing already exists -I’ve talked about ...

For the past two years, I have had the honor and privilege or authoring SSIS Design Patterns alongside Jessica Moss, Michelle Ufford, Tim Mitchell, and Matt Masson. Publication of the book – like many projects of this scope – has been delayed. The current publication date is 27 Aug 2012 and I have high confidence in this date. I take ...

I am installing SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Edition on a virtual machine as I type. You can do this. Here’s one way: Grab some virtual machine software. I like Oracle VirtualBox. It’s cool. It’s free. Install VirtualBox. Download the 180-day free trial of Windows Server 2008 R2. Also cool. Also free. Once Windows ...

I have built a beta version of Linchpin People’s SSIS Framework, now including much-requested reports. You can grab the updated copy here. I appreciate any feedback you care to share. :{>

Data files containing comma separated values, or CSV, are some of the most common data formats used for data representation and storage outside the database.  When it comes to loading CSV data into the database, many options exist, however, few make it as simple as CSVexpress, powered by expressor software.  I recently visited ...

To my mind the most interesting piece of news to come out of the recent PASS conference was the unveiling of a new SQL Azure Labs project coming from the SQL Server organisation that has the codename ''Data Explorer'' (not a very imaginitive codename I'm sure you'll agree) and for which there is information available at ...

If you haven’t yet, check out the Stairways – a series of tutorial articles at SQL Server Central. They. rock. I was really excited when Steve Jones (Blog | @way0utwest | SQLPeople) contacted me to write the Stairway series of tutorials for SSIS! The third article is live this morning. Altogether, the published articles are: What is SSIS? ...

In preparation for SQL Saturday #84 – Kalamazoo,  SQLBits 9, and the PASS Summit 2011; I’ve been honing my presentation called Designing an SSIS Framework. I delivered this presentation a few times over the past couple months. Each time, I promised the attendees I’d send them the code if they emailed me… and a couple things got in the ...