Fix for Broken SQL Server Integration Services Projects in Visual Studio 2012
After the latest SQL Server and Visual Studio updates, I was experiencing the following error every time I opened a SSIS project in Visual Studio … Read More
OData SSIS Component Now Available for SQL Server 2012
OData is Microsoft’s open data protocol and is a key part of their hybrid, cross-platform, distributed computing strategy. As mentioned in a previous blog post, … Read More
The Importance of OData in Microsoft’s Data Strategy
OData is a standardized protocol for creating and consuming data APIs. In a similar way to how web services and later REST provided an HTTP … Read More
PowerView vs. PowerPivot vs. Power BI
With Power BI being announced for general availability on Office 365, we have a customers who are seeing the various Microsoft business intelligence products that … Read More
Azure SQL vs. Traditional SQL Clusters: Massive Price Differences for Small Databases
In the “old days” (e.g. pre-cloud), the minimum high availability SQL cluster in “Active-Passive” mode. The minimum license for SQL you need is for the … Read More
Microsoft is now one of Hadoop’s Biggest Supporters
Hadoop is the primary big data platform in use today. What started out as an indexing engine originally developed by Google and then by Yahoo … Read More
Using PowerPivot and PowerView: 311 Requests
The City of Toronto has a 311 service for anyone requiring information or service. As part of their open data initiative, the City of Toronto … Read More
Comparing Different Methods for Importing Text Files into PowerPivot
One of the simple challenges in managing large files is importing text files into Excel. I found some CSV files from the City of Toronto’s … Read More
Microsoft is now Cloud First
Microsoft has moved its focus to the cloud and is actively promoting its cloud based services over its on premise software. Microsoft’s “Cloud First” approach … Read More