Archive for the ‘Database Development’ Category

Five Places to Document Before You Win the Lottery

When a project starts to go sideways and you’re cursing Naive Past You who signed off on the “aggressive” time estimates as you feed quarters into the vending machine in hopes that powdered donuts and honey buns won’t give you a heart attack before you hit the deadline, the last thing you want to talk [...]

What Are We Doing Here, Exactly?

There’s a secret about being a developer that I forget all the time. I know it, and I should remember it, but in the daily drama of life, I tend to forget it. Here it is: Knowing how to do something is the easy part. Knowing what to do… that’s hard. Technical skills allow me [...]

Adventures in MDX – Sets

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m just not good at MDX. No excuses… I’m just not. Rather than jumping in and memorizing functions and complex structures, I’m trying to train my over-saturated brain to comprehend how the data is structured, and subsequently, how to get said data out of the cube and into a result set. [...]

Getting Schooled on Dynamic PIVOT

I wrote a post about Deconstructing Pivot. With my newfound confidence, I decided to tackle dynamic pivots. This is a common scenario where you need to PIVOT, but you don’t know exactly what you’re going to end up with. Basically, you want to allow all of the possible column headers to come back with the [...]

Deconstructing PIVOT

I’m intimidated by PIVOT. I’ve had a heck of a time wrapping my head around it, which is shameful, because Junior Accountants have been making pivot charts in Excel for years. They get it, so why can’t I? Well, I’ve got a few theories… Anyway, I finally got into a situation where I couldn’t avoid [...]

Trusted Foreign Keys

Hey friends!  Long time, no see.  I know, you’re wondering where I’ve been.  Lately, I’ve had the luxury of taking some time to work on Microsoft certifications.  I just got through 70-448, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance.  Now, I’m working on 70-433, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Database Development.  I’ll admit… I [...]