SQL

It’s been a while since I’ve written a #tsql2sday post, but thought that this month’s topic was worthy of me hoping into the pool with the #sqlfamily. This month the subject is “Automation”. chosen by Hemanth D. (Blog | @SqlChow). If you want to read the opening post, please click the image above. I’m lover of software automation and been a fan since writing my first macro in Excel when I was in high school. I loved anything that makes it easier for you to get more done with less. Back in the 2000’s I got introduced to SQL 2000 and DTS and it changed my world. My first package I created was awesome and so exciting it took data from database and put it into another one and then truncated the table, once I scheduled it to run I was able to not worry about handling that task anymore and sleep peacefully. Since then I’ve found my passion and made a living improving businesses through process improvement using automation.

I’ve been using Microsoft Access since Access 97 it’s a very powerful tool is you use it right. You can use it for everything from personal Baseball card inventory control to managing home inventories; even fortune 500 companies use it to manage million dollar systems. As I said if you use it right it can be quite a powerful tool built on some amazing framework. Recently a friend who’s getting into access asked me if I could provide him some resources so that he can get better familiar with the tool. Below is a list of resources I put together for him.

Here’s another fun solution for you business intelligence people out there. Suppose you wanted to pull data that was updated in the last 15mins based on when a row was last. I’m sure there are many ways to accomplish this but I like to use the DATEADD() function in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Below is the query using the AdventureWorks2008R2 database enjoy.

SELECT I.ProductID, I.LocationID, I.Bin, I.Shelf, I.Quantity, P.ProductNumber, P.Name, I.ModifiedDate

So I’m about a month late or maybe three in writing my recap on the event so here goes. It was awesomeness !!!! 2012 marked my second SQL Saturday that I’ve attended and have to say it just keeps getting better. This year I was able to volunteer with registration which is an awesome way to meet all the attendees well at least most of them. Also I hooped into five awesome sessions “A Complete BI Solution in About an Hour!” With Arron King, SRS Report Builder for Business Intelligence with David Eichner, Kama Sutra of SSIS: A guide to loving ETL with Bill Fellows, and The Script Task, powerhouse of SSIS with Norman Kelm, and Join Us! Getting Started as a Technical Speaker with Eddie Wuerch cause I would love to start speaking at SQL events outside of work. Biggest take a way’s from this year event was networking with others in the profession and the knowledge I picked up from all the sessions. I’m already looking forward to the 2013 event.

Another #Meme 15 topic brought you by MVP Jason Strate (Blog | twitter). This month topic “What are ten blogs that you think other SQL Server professionals should be following but might not be?” Coming up with a list of just 10 is harder than I thought narrowing it down to ten is just way to hard but i was able to do. The list I  put together covers everyone from the newbie to SQL to the all-round DBA.

A business partner approached me the other day looking to share information with my company. Since parts numbers are recycled more often than lame jokes in my business one of the things we needed the business partner to provide was the brand of the part. The business partner said that this would be difficult to do since they were unfamiliar with linking data across tables in any manner. After understanding a little about the setup of the partner’s tables I taught them to design a view linking the two primary tables where the data could be seen together through a view. Since their tables where normalized all they needed was an INNER JOIN statement to make this happen. Below is a sample of the statement i wrote for the partner.