DB Journal:Generate Script for objects and dependent objects

An article with some good ideas here.. I wish Authors would stop using "objects" to describe tings in a database (or anywhere else for that matter). Only developers understand that language and DBAs without that background, which is probably most, have their eyes glaze over when they see the word. Actually everybody does except for school trained, professional C# or some other OO developer. Just call it what it is. "Changes to a Database" would probably give an article like this alot more mileage.

Generate Script for objects and dependent objects: "SQL Server database administrators often deploy object changes, such as table, procedure, trigger etc., on the production system. Usually when they do, they check for dependencies, just to make sure that those changes are not going to break the system.
This article examines how to find most of the possible dependencies and generate a script for those objects and it dependent objects. This article will illustrate how to take advantage of SQL DMO, T-SQL and VBScript to accomplish this."

Kevin B Smith's WebLog : Enterprise Architecture: Tracking Portal

Kevin Smith talks about some high-payoff applications for Biztalk, with this as the first.
Biztalk is positioning it's capabilities for traking information flow in real time, and it's flexible architecture has made it fit into alot of different roles, and do them well. As BAM and real-time "tracking" becomes more mature, those systems will be able to benefit a great deal from Data Marts that are in their functional areas, to make workflow decisions based on historical trends or opportunities.

Kevin B Smith's WebLog : Enterprise Architecture: Tracking Portal: "The approach that we have been using over here in jolly old Blighty for a while now, is to build the Tracking Portal using BAM to capture the key state and business transaction information, and SQL Reporting Services, (another technology that I think is very cool indeed), to render the Business and Support views from the tracking database. Using this approach the Tracking Portal can be put together very cheaply with a rich reach UI, and in my experience providing these views, especially the Support view could get you out of some very difficult situations after you goes live. Ok, so let�s dig a little deeper�"

GisliO.net [MSFT] : SQL Server BI Webcasts

Bookmark that page! lots of good webcasts coming up next month.

GisliO.net [MSFT] : SQL Server BI Webcasts: "SQL Server BI Webcasts
If you want to learn more about BI in SQL Server 2005, then tune into the webcasts at http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/sqlserverbi.mspx and if you meet the requirements you could even win a portable media center pre-loaded with a selection of the webcasts. "

Michael Rys: Material for my MSDN WebCast "Making the Most of XQuery with SQL Server 2005"

From Michael Rys:

Material for my MSDN WebCast "Making the Most of XQuery with SQL Server 2005": "Here are the code snippets I used during my WebCast demo (please use in order and don't forget to follow the links to the estimated query plans):"

When Does Enterprise ETL Make Sense?

When Does Enterprise ETL Make Sense?: "For customers in richly heterogeneous environments, especially those who are consolidating information from dozens (or even hundreds) of different data sources or applications into an operational data store or data warehouse, an ETL tool from an Ascential, Informatica, or another enterprise ETL vendor makes a great deal of sense. Data integration pure-plays such as Ascential and Informatica, especially, provide canned support for all major relational databases, along with pre-built adapters for many different enterprise application suites (such as Oracle, SAP, and Siebel), and connectivity to a variety of different non-relational or semi-structured repositories.

Why, then, aren�t enterprise ETL tools used in some organizations? The biggest issue, analysts say, is price: All of this connectivity, coupled with (in the case of Ascential and Informatica) parallel-processing capabilities, metadata management, the ability to perform sophisticated transformations, and the availability and reliability safeguards associated with the extraction, transformation, and loading of data, can cost a customer beaucoup bucks."

Data Storage Market to Grow by 35 Percent in 2005

Info Tech Research Group: Data Storage Market to Grow by 35 Percent in 2005: "The data storage market will grow by 35 percent in 2005, according to a new study from Info-Tech Research Group (www.infotech.com/san), a leading IT analyst firm. Data storage is the number one priority for mid-sized enterprises that plan to 'invest heavily' in 2005.

Storage area networks (SANs) are the hottest segment of the red-hot storage market. Info-Tech predicts a 40 percent growth in the SAN market in 2005."

Whidbey, Yukon Combo Provides BI Development Platform

Indications of strategy from Microsoft... this packaged approach is something to be ready for, it's a train that can't be stopped. Oracle has similar plans (Mark Rittman's site) although they are not quite as clear with their message.


Yahoo! News - Whidbey, Yukon Combo Provides BI Development Platform: "'So, it's a natural for us to say, let's take Visual Studio and extend that so it becomes a full-fledged BI development environment,' Baker said.

'And that's what we've done. So, we have all the team development aspects that Visual Studio has anyway, and bring that into this space. Then we add the editors for ETL [extraction, transformation and loading], for cubes, for KPIs [key performance indicators], for reports, et cetera, and just put all that into Visual Studio,' Baker said. "

"Reporting Services is probably one of the most widespread managed programs out there in terms of adoption—there are well over 100,000 servers at this point," Baker said. "And data is managed all the way from day one. So, it was a huge bet on our part."

Google: BI (Business Intelligence) Reporting Engineer

An interesting post... for Google.

Google: BI (Business Intelligence) Reporting Engineer: "This position is located in Mountain View, CA.

Google is looking for outstanding Engineering professionals who will lead the development effort for creating corporate reports. The successful candidate will be responsible for creating reporting standards, coaching and supporting power users with Business Intelligence reporting tools. This position requires experience in a highly dynamic environment with high service levels. You must have excellent communications skills and an outstanding track record with the user community in order to be considered for this position."

SQL Server 2005 Express Presentation

From Kent Tegels, for those that find PPTs extremely helpful:

My SQL Server 2005 Express Presentation now downloadable... from Microsoft.com?: "
Want to learn more about SQL Server 2005 Express Edition? You can now download my SQL Summit presentation directly from Microsoft at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f07fd0b0-ef37-47d2-83a0-6415e63048cb&displaylang=en"

Making Enterprise Manager faster with lots of databases

Making Enterprise Manager faster with lots of databases: "I wish I remember where I saw this posted. I owe mad props to someone but I can't remember who. If your server has lots of databases that you don't have access to and you connect using Enterprise Manager you may have noticed that it takes a loooong time to populate the Databases tab. This especially applies in the hosting world when you're dealing with a shared SQL Server."

MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents

From EWeek:

MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents: "First, 5.0. What's still missing?
Widenius: We've got the most demand for big features. What we've done, some parts work extremely well, and some parts are just working. Now we want to get the working parts working really well. In the past, and now to some extent, MySQL has been good for production use, when you know what the application is doing and you know how to do queries in a good way, following good practice.

But at times, users don't have full control of the database. They can add queries without knowing what's efficient and what is not. MySQL, you just have to rewrite the query a bit. We could be much better with ad hoc queries. "

Slow news today. I added some Google ads on the right using adsense, mainly to see what all they hype is about.

MySQL updates beta of database migration tool

MySQL updates beta of database migration tool | IDGNS | News | 2005-04-19 | By James Niccolai, IDG News Service: "The MySQL Migration Suite is currently for migrating from Oracle's (Profile, Products, Articles) database and Microsoft's (Profile, Products, Articles) Access. Future versions will support Microsoft SQL Server, IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) DB2 and Informix databases and Sybase's (Profile, Products, Articles) database. MySQL said. "

Migration tool is here.

Microsoft SQL Server - April CTP (aka Beta 3) Available Today - SQLTeam.com

Microsoft SQL Server - April CTP (aka Beta 3) Available Today - SQLTeam.com: "Microsoft is announcing this morning that the feature complete April Community Technology Preview (CTP) will be available for download today. They are also announcing that they are releasing this instead of Beta 3. They plan to continue to release CTP's until SQL Server 2005 ships.

Microsoft is also announcing a 'Go Live' license for the Express Edition of SQL Server 2005. If you want to put any other edition into production you'll need to join their TAP program. I can't imagine they're going to take a huge number of organizations into that program. "

Ms also announced the next betas for Visual Studio and the .NET platform on the same day.

The "Go Live" license - and it is for a free product - is big news. According to Microsoft, SQL Server 2005 Express, the next version of the venerable MSDE, is ready for production. More details on what Go-Live means is here: "This addendum (called a ‘Go-Live’ License) will permit customers to deploy applications based on these products in production environments."

Here's a recent intro article on SQL Server Express at Database Journal.

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance�What Were the Legislators Thinking?

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance�What Were the Legislators Thinking?: "What Should You Do? Let�s look at the obvious: most organizations must greatly increase the amount and variety of information needed and expand the number of people who must have access to that information. In a nutshell, the technology supporting the data warehouse and data marts in the Corporate Information Factory (CIF) will be stressed far more than it has been in the past in terms of volumes of data required and number and complexity of queries issued. The underlying technology for the CIF must provide for high scalability and extremely good query performance while accommodating this new depth of data and users. Just consider the fact that your compliance queries may have to sift through millions or billions of rows of data without a lot of advanced notice!"


Sarbanes-Oxley is one of those things that you better know what it means to you or you are going to get pushed aside and told what you will do to comply. Don't let it happen to you.

Don Burleson's Blog

In Tom Kyte Has Started A Blog Mark Rittman points out a few Oracle luminaries that have blogs on blogger (and are thus, as Mark explains, not on Orablogs).

One is a true genius in the Oracle world that has dedicated a good part of his career to teaching Oracle DBAs everywhere how to do their jobs better, Don Burleson. His personal blog however deserves a place in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction hall of fame, as Don explains he is a true animal lover with "55 horses, three dogs, three cats, countless chickens, and sundry wildlife ("chuck" the woodchuck)", and that while he has special disdain for animal abusers, he apparently has no pity for dying bunnies of any kind.

And I certainly understand one's admiration for your horse, but the the only description for the pic on display is "horse-porn."



Amusing. And bizarre. Even if I have to aagree, it is an impressive horse.

SQL Server Integration Services is Enterprise ETL - Forrester

Donald Farmer on SQL Server Integration Services - this entry has been removed off the web page... (?) but here is what was in my RSS feed:

Analysts are really starting to see confirm the value of our enterprise data integration capabilities, compared with other ETL vendors. This report from Forrester calls out our collaborative development environment, our data quality components, our scalability and reliability features, and of course our “seductive“ price-performance ratio.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/bi/integrate/productinfo/foresterreport.asp

As the report says: Get ready to take SSIS where you didn't dare take DTS.

Integration services is generating ALOT of hype, as the giant killer to other ETL vendors such as Informatica and Ascentinel. The Forrester report is very kind, saying this is ready for Enterprise ETL use (with a logical explanation too, basing it on a Dec 8 report called ("How to Evaluate Enterprise ETL.") Most MS products don't live up to the hype when it comes down to it, but the jury is still out on this one.

The 64-bit Windows Argument

Windows done right | InfoWorld | Column | 2005-04-06 | By Tom Yager discusses the big selling point for 64-bit architecture - memory access. The PAE switch, required to access memory past 4GB on windows on 32-bit architectures, is a hack, and the column explains why in very good detail.

Today, I recommend to everyone thinking of bringing up a new database that they max out the memory on the box - RAM is cheap and is critical to database performance. If you're stuck in 2-year ago thinking that a gig of RAM is alot to ask for, and you should be happy with it, get over it :) And if you want more than 4 GB, this article will give you the ammunition to credibly recommend a 64-bit architecture.

Open-Source Mining for Gold - literally

Some good stuff in Intelligent Enterprise's current issue:

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Open-Source Thinking Taps a Rich Vein: "I'm fascinated by the innovative ideas some companies come up with to expand their intellectual capital. One of the most inventive techniques I've seen was Goldcorp's approach of sharing its best thinking with the world and challenging all comers to show they could do better. It was a high-risk move that paid off generously.

Goldcorp is a gold mining company. In the mid-1990s, executives thought the firm's 50-year-old Red Lake mine in Ontario, Canada, was nearing the end of its life, but test drilling indicated that previously unknown deposits of gold might still exist on the 55,000-acre property. Unfortunately, conventional test methods made it difficult to estimate the value or precise location of the new deposits, and the company's geologists couldn't agree on how to move forward.

The eureka moment occurred for Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen while attending an MIT course in 1999. As he explained it to me: 'There was a discussion about the development of Linux, and I said to myself, 'There it is � that's the template I want to use.''
McEwen presented the idea to his head geologist, saying: 'I'd like to take all of our geology, all the data we have that goes back to 1948, and share it with the world. Then we'll give people an incentive to tell us where we're going to find the next 6 million ounces of gold.'

McEwen launched the Goldcorp Challenge, a contest with $575,000 in prize money for the best suggestions as to where to find the richest veins of gold. The company posted on the Internet every scrap of information it knew about its Red Lake Mine property.

Goldcorp received 52 submissions and a lot of fresh insight. A panel of judges then chose 25 semi-finalists on the basis of the soundness of their geological logic and degree of innovation. Each was awarded $10,000. The semi-finalists were then asked to elaborate on their submissions, and then the finalists were chosen. The top prize was $105,000."

How cool is that? It makes sense in this case... Goldcorp owned the property, so the datareally couldn't be used by competitors (except to get a glimpse onside the company perhaps). Wonder what some other good candidates might be... This might be good idea for the government to be honest.

The Government Information Factory

The Government Information Factory: "The GIF is in many ways similar to the CIF. The GIF basic architecture is very similar to the CIF architecture. There is no question that the two architectures are related. First came the CIF then came the GIF. There are significant differences between the two architectures.
The first significant difference between the architectures is the need for wide integration of data in government systems. The corporate motivation for a data warehouse includes only the corporation. They only build a system for themselves.
The government has a different set of problems. After September 11, 2001, there is a mandate from congress and the president to share data among government departments. Within the boundaries of the law data between the FBI, Immigration and Naturalization, the CIA and many others must be shared."

If you've ever cocked your head when you've heard of the GIF, this is a good introduction.

Free Oracle 10g and Self-Study guide

On this page you can enter the keyword GetStarted and receive a nice 3cd starter pack (I just received it). It includes Oracle 10g standard for Windows, a self-study guide, and tutorials on building apps with HTML DB. It;s a great deal, and promises that you will "master it in two days with the self-study courses."

That may not be 100% true, but from the looks of it the set will get show you how to get around the database quickly provide a great base to learn from.

Q&A: Managing Exploding Data Volumes (with Teradata)

Q&A: Managing Exploding Data Volumes: "We spoke with Stephen Brobst, chief technology officer of Teradata, about contemporary trends in data warehousing. In spite of its NCR hardware underpinnings, Brobst says Teradata�s Warehouse is much more than just a data warehousing appliance, and downplays the likelihood of a Teradata-branded appliance at any point in the near future. Moreover, he thinks there�s plenty of upside to the data warehousing market, with data volumes predicted to balloon into the stratosphere over the next few years. "

A Database Journal Guide to MySQL Certification: Part 1, Core Certification

Yes, MySQL has a certification too. Check out a first-hand review.

A Database Journal Guide to MySQL Certification: Part 1, Core Certification: "I recently arranged for the developers at our company to get MySQL certified. From the employer's point of view, it was not the piece of paper I was after. Rather, the improved productivity that properly-trained MySQL users could provide. The benefits have been noticeable. The number of badly written queries has decreased, saving everyone time and effort. The developers feel more confident using MySQL, and can use features they previously had not known existed. "

Tiger Wood's golf shot

Nothing to do with regular subjects, but, Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger has a link to shots, and you must see them if you didn't catch it on tv.

Alan Alda's Interviewing Tips for Uncovering Business Requirements

From Mark Rittman: Alan Alda's Interviewing Tips for Uncovering Business Requirements

Oracle | News.blog | CNET News.com

Oracle | News.blog | CNET News.com: a blog from News.com which I suppose will cover tasty tidbits about Oracls. Pretty bare so far though. Last article is about how Larry Ellison has just put his $25 million house up for sale.

Business Metadata: How to Write Definitions

A good reference. Very good. B-Eye network is coming out with a whole lot of useful info since it opened a few months ago. Always something useful.

Business Metadata: How to Write Definitions: "ntroduction: The Importance of Definitions
Many errors and accidents are made or caused by misunderstandings of the meanings of terms used.
How many times have you been in a meeting when the words you heard did not match what you thought they should be?
Many business decisions are made (and later regretted) due to a misunderstanding of the data, and what the data element used in a report is signifying. Some of these accidents and misunderstandings are large enough to be reported in the media. In prior articles I referred to the Mars Lander episode, where the unit of measure was assumed and not stated made explicitly. Miscalculations were made and the equipment was lost. Our businesses are filled with many such examples. Although not as costly, they still have a significant impact on the business.
Context is everything. The English language is full of meaning nuances; a word may have multiple meanings based upon the context in which it is used."

Indeed Jobroll

After seeing this mentioned on A VC, I added a jobroll on the right column... it's not local, but some may find it interesting. Indeed gets lots of props from the tech community.

SQL Server 2005 - Management Utilities

SQL Server 2005 - Management Utilities: "In the first article of this short series covering new and improved utilities of SQL Server 2005 Beta 2, we presented the SQL Server Management Studio, which provides a single, uniform interface for the majority of administration and programming tasks. We also discussed SQL Profiler and Database Tuning Advisor, which, while operating independently, can be invoked from its Tools menu. Now it is time to review the remaining graphical and command line programs, which should be part of the toolkit of every SQL Server 2005 database administrator and programmer. "

Improvements to dimension security in Analysis Services 2005

From Mosha's blog...

Improvements to dimension security in Analysis Services 2005: "What changed with respect to dimension security in Analysis Services 2005 ? A lot ! I will try to touch on most important changes. "

The number of feature additions/changes is pretty overwhelming for SQL Server 2005. Which only tells you... you better not wait until it comes out to start learning it.

Data Warehousing: Relational vs. Multi-Dimensional Data

This is a good series of articles that puts alot of best paractices into perspective, worth checking out:

Data Warehousing: Relational vs. Multi-Dimensional Data: "Mr. Kimball also considers granularity and atomic level data to be key to his multi-dimensional design data warehouse or BUS. In Kimball University, Design Tip #21, Declaring the Grain' it states: 'The most important step in a dimensional design is declaring the grain of the fact table. Declaring the grain means saying EXACTLY what a fact table represents... When you make a grain declaration, you can have a very precise discussion of which dimensions are possible and which ones are not...
Atomic data has the most dimensionality and so it can be constrained and rolled up in every way that is possible for that data source. Atomic data is a perfect match for the dimensional approach... higher levels of aggregation will almost always have smaller dimensions...
Since useful aggregations necessarily shrink dimensions and remove dimensions, it leads to the realization that aggregated data must always be used in conjunction with base atomic data, because aggregated data has less dimensional detail.'"

Data Warehouse is dead?

Sadagopan's weblog on Emerging Technologies,Thoughts, Ideas,Trends and Cyberworld: "The data warehouse is dead. Age-old methods of gathering and storing data into centralized warehouses, transforming it into information and generating reports, are inadequate and do not deliver either speed or intelligence to the enterprise."

Sadagopan linked this from this Loosely Coupled article last month authored by Michael Carter. Who is he? A co-founder of CXO systems, a real-time dashboard startup, which marks this as nothing but marketing,and marketing only to the clueless at that. Truly, anybody that had a clue would steer clear from CXO systems after reading this gibberish. Real-time dashboarding has its place, but Michael doesn't appear to have any understanding of the concept that there is yet-untapped knowledge to be mined from most stores of data, and ditching the history of that data means it will never be discovered.

Paying off Loosely Coupled.com probably goes a long way to getting this version of reality past editors that should know better.

eWeek talks about MapPoint 2004 Fleet Edition

Chandu Thota's WebLog : eWeek talks about MapPoint 2004 Fleet Edition: "MapPoint 2004 Fleet Edition is being reviewed by eWeek:
Microsoft Offers Partners New MapPoint License Option
'Microsoft has acceded to partners' requests to provide more reasonable licensing options for MapPoint, a mapping software product now being tweaked by some integrators to create custom logistics applications for enterprises and SMBs that run their own fleets of cars or trucks. '"

Improving Query Performance for Data Warehouses - Survey

Alot of good info in this Ventana Survey:


Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Improving Query Performance for Data Warehouses: "71% of the respondents said their users would benefit from having significantly more OLAP dimensions or relational database query filters. However, when queried for a monetary value for this capability, study results showed 52% of the respondents did not know the value. 30% of the respondents said this capability was worth $100k or less. Bottom line: While IT clearly sees value in having more data, particularly more dimensional data, it can�t quantify the value."

SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands-on labs available

.net and other interesting dev stuff in PA : SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands-on labs available: "Are you ready to experience SQL Server 2005?
Announcing the launch of the SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands on labs. In these labs, you will get to experience many of the new features in SQL Server 2005 including CLR integration, XML support and deep business intelligence integration.
Just follow the link and experience SQL Server 2005 for yourself
Registration link:
http://msdn.demoservers.com/login.aspx?group=sql2005"


Wow. I just tried the SQL 2005 Reporting Services lab, but I couldn't reach it... looks like the site is bogged down and too slow to maintain the connection. Still very nice, without going through the pain and effort of running the setup yourself. I have to try this out.

Flexible DTS Packages with Perl

Flexible DTS Packages with Perl: "Perl is a simple 'glue' language that brings together the best of many of the compiled languages such as Pascal and C. ActiveState ActivePerl for Windows is a Perl interpreter that interfaces with ActiveX so that Perl scripts can be written to perform any of the functions that can be performed with VBScript, CScript, ASP, etc. Therefore using ActivePerl, you can create and execute DTS packages just as you can with any other ActiveX scripting language. Below is a fairly easy to understand script written in Perl to do just that. I will go through the script in detail from defining the package objects and properties, to package execution, and finally collecting errors."

SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands-on labs available

.net and other interesting dev stuff in PA : SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands-on labs available: "Are you ready to experience SQL Server 2005?
Announcing the launch of the SQL Server 2005 Virtual Hands on labs. In these labs, you will get to experience many of the new features in SQL Server 2005 including CLR integration, XML support and deep business intelligence integration.
Just follow the link and experience SQL Server 2005 for yourself
Registration link:
http://msdn.demoservers.com/login.aspx?group=sql2005"


Wow. I just tried the SQL 2005 Reporting Services lab, but I couldn't reach it... looks like the site is bogged down and too slow to maintain the connection. Still very nice, without going through the pain and effort of running the setup yourself. I have to try this out.

BI and Political Resistance

BI and Political Resistance: "Any experienced BI project manager is likely to have run into situations where the political obstacles are very real and very difficult to surmount. Together with an inadequate technical platform, poor data quality and insufficient change management efforts, internal office politics is one of the major factors that can ruin a BI project (or a CPM project)."

Taking care of the political issue is probably the one factor that can always doom a BI project, and maybe the only thing that can only be obtained up front, and never after the fact, and can't be fixed by throwing people at it.

Open source databases - a sword that cuts both ways?

Open source databases - a sword that cuts both ways? | The Register: "Is open source strategic? This is a question that every company thinking about the use of open source products needs to face. If open source is strategic then, like any other strategic resource, it needs to be managed: you need to have a specific strategy for open source products.
The first thing to decide is the areas in which open source is to be deployed. Does this only apply to Linux and network servers or does it extend to application servers, databases and development environments? In each case, you also need to decide which open source products you are going to endorse from a strategic perspective."

SQL Server Developer Center: SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

From Michael Rys, a great way for a DBA to spend a Saturday night:

SQL Server Developer Center: SQL Server 2005 Webcasts

New presentation on advanced SQL Injection

A good link, and applicable to just about any database:

Pete Finnigan's Oracle security weblog: "I just found that Esteban Mart�nez Fay� has made available presentation that he has written based on a presentation that he has made the G-Con III conference in Mexico City. The page is called 'Advanced SQL Injection in Oracle databases' and is a collection of a PDF of the 37 slides that describe new ways to exploit Oracle with SQL Injection including working examples and also how to protect against these threats. The zip file available there includes the pdf and also a number of SQL files and a jsp file. "

Getting "Real" with Open Source Databases

Getting "Real" with Open Source Databases: "Broad acceptance of open source databases in production environments is imminent. Selecting the right enabling technology is a key task for IT management to successfully implement coexistence.
The growing popularity of open source databases, like any emerging technology being adopted for mainstream IT use, provides both added opportunities and unexpected challenges. Coexistence and integration with existing commercial databases requires careful planning and consideration, particularly if open source databases are to be leveraged and used for mission-critical applications in production environments."

Populating a fact table with SSIS

Nice article.... worthy of a bookmark.

Populating a fact table with SSIS: "Approaching SSIS (Sql Server Integration Services) from a DTS background one of the questions that comes to mind is: what is the better way to populate a fact table?
Assuming you have a conventional star schema, you should have a fact table with two kind of fields: surrogate keys and measures. When it's time to populate the fact table, the common issue is to transform application dimensional keys into surrogate keys. To do that, my favorite way with DTS is to create a SQL query which joins the source table containing the fact measures (still in staging db) with the previously loaded dimension tables (already in data mart db)."