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 is a brief post describing how I set up IIS Express on Visual Studio 2010. Using the built in Visual Studio Development Server (a.k.a Cassini) is great in many cases but it has a few limitations, for me the most significant are • No SSL support • Can only run localhost – so nobody can browse to [...]

Like most technical people who scour the web for information, I’ve come across some really smart people who write their thoughts, offer help, write tutorials, and also somehow manage to hold down a day job AND manage to (presumably) have a life outside of work. One of the most impressive people has got to be Scott [...]

In the last few days we have seen a huge surge in people experiencing what has become known as the “Black Screen of Death” - a bit of a play on the infamous Blue Screen of Death (both are now being called the BSOD).

Recently I found myself having to create a system by which I could capture some user data from a web application using some unobtrusive javascript. I settled on a system using jQuery, jQueryUI and an XML Web Service. The basic idea is quite simple: the user clicks a hyperlink, this triggers a form to pop [...]

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) builds upon years of traditional software engineering principles. The core tenets of software engineering are known by most programmers in principle if not always in practice.