T-SQL Tuesday is hosted this month by Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). The subject is what is your favorite or least favorite data type. As Brent describes it, “Your mission: write a blog post about your favorite data type“. Following is my opinion for T-SQL Tuesday #136 – My Favorite Data Type. Around 2005/2007, I was charged… Continue reading T-SQL Tuesday #136 – My Favorite Data Type
Author: Tom Huguelet
You have chosen wisely
DAX Duration Measure in Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds
Credit where credit is due. This is an enhancement of the technique originally posted here by @konstantinos and @smoupre. A client needed a duration expressed in this format: 2 days, 05:03:52 In other words, Whenever the duration exceeds 86,400 seconds, express that portion in days, then build the remainder in hh:mm:ss format. This is the… Continue reading DAX Duration Measure in Days, Hours, Minutes, Seconds
Welcome (back) to my new (old) site
Somewhere around 2013 I was so awed by Microsoft’s Office 365 offering that I went “all-in” and moved my website to the then-nascent platform. Earlier this year the powers-that-be “sunsetted” the public-facing website portion of that product, so here we are, back in the open-source world. I’ve been stupendously lazy about my web-site over the… Continue reading Welcome (back) to my new (old) site
MDX for Date Formatting
This is a simple MDX snippet, but it comes up often enough that I think it’s worth a blog entry. A frequent question that comes up is how to format dates for display in MDX, especially in the parameter boxes on Reporting Services reports. The best practice is to let whatever front end you are… Continue reading MDX for Date Formatting
I am positive that measure is not negative – Weird Analysis Services Cube Behavior
I ran into a situation recently that had me stumped for a bit, and there didn’t seem to be any other posts about this when I searched. I was working with a cube containing a very straightforward measure. This was an integer column and used an AggregationType of SUM. No other calculations were involved. When… Continue reading I am positive that measure is not negative – Weird Analysis Services Cube Behavior
Simple way to test connectivity or compose OLEDB connection strings
This tip has been around a while, but I still run into developers who don’t know it, so it’s worth a post. If you ever need to test connectivity or compose a valid OLEDB connection string, try this: Create an empty text file. Rename the extension from TXT to UDL Double click this file. The Data… Continue reading Simple way to test connectivity or compose OLEDB connection strings
Windows 8 Hot-Keys
One of the best things you can do to get comfortable with a new OS is take some time to learn the keyboard shortcuts. Here are the Windows 8 Hot-Keys Windows logo key+ C Opens Charms bar Windows logo key+, Temporarily peeks at the desktop Windows logo key+. Moves the gutter to the right (snaps an… Continue reading Windows 8 Hot-Keys
Backing up SSAS – Yes or No?
A question came up recently about how to back up SSAS. The vast majority of my clients do not back up SSAS. This isn’t appropropriate for all deployments, though. Here’s the thread: This runs contrary to customary SQL server practice, but : You may want to evaluate whether you back up the SSAS servers at… Continue reading Backing up SSAS – Yes or No?
Agile and Business Intelligence
I had a client ask me about some of the techniques we are currently using, “Tom, Can you send me authors, book titles and/or links outlining agile development (Story conferences, sprints, scrums, etc…).” This was my response: Here is the site that “started it all”: http://agilemanifesto.org/ I used this book: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Data-Warehousing-World-Class-Intelligence/dp/0595471676 to acquire some of… Continue reading Agile and Business Intelligence