In this article I’ll conclude my set of articles into SSIS configuration. This article will be slightly more verbose than the previous two, but I hope I clearly convey the logic behind my method. If you haven’t yet done so, please read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series. The Portability problem In my [...]

In Part 1 I showed how a simple SSIS package could be created using variables and expressions as a basis for deployable configuration. When I first started working with SSIS I assumed naively that during deployment, a wizard or a configuration file would allow the variables and expressions to be readily editable. Speaking of which, how do [...]

This is the first part of a two-part post about creating and deploying a simple SSIS package. When I first started this I was a complete novice as regards SSIS. I thought it was ’something like’ DTS, which I had used quite frequently in SQL Server 2000. To make matters worse, I never actually [...]

One of the things I’ve been doing recently has been writing lots of SQL inserts in which I’ve had to specify the columns. For example: INSERT INTO tblMyTable (<column list>) SELECT <column list> FROM tblMySourceTable The most tedious part was writing the column names in a comma-separated list. It would be good if I could automagically create a list [...]

One of the things I’ve had to do recently is work out if objects on a SQL Server had been modified after a particular date. I did some Googling and came up with the following which I’ve condensed into one simple and easy to read article. Just one caveat before we dive in: these scripts [...]

This article applies to DTS packages on SQL Server 2008 R2, but will probably work on most other versions. Yes I know, I know - DTS is deprecated. But bear with me. There is a lot of DTS still hanging around out there.

Many is the time that I have had a list, perhaps created in the front-end of a program that, was pushed through to the database and then needed to be iterated through. Essentially I wanted a simple way to do what in JScript or CSharp is a String.Split(’,'), returning an array of strings.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with orphaned users in SQL Server, and probably won’t be the last but today I found myself investigating why it happens and how to resolve the issue it causes. I guess before I start on that I should explain what an orphaned user is.