It’s a new year, you (hopefully) have a new training budget and vacation time, and I hope you’ll consider SQL Cruise Caribbean 2015. It departs Miami, FL on Saturday, February 7, 2015; stops in Saint Maarten, US Virgin Islands, and Bahamas; and returns to Miami on Saturday, February 14, 2015. In between, there are hours of in-depth SQL Server training! 5 Reasons to Board Norwegian Getaway for SQL Cruise Have you checked the weather report lately?
This is an archive of the posts published to LessThanDot from 2008 to 2018, over a decade of useful content. While we're no longer adding new content, we still receive a lot of visitors and wanted to make sure the content didn't disappear forever.
Hello and welcome to one of my rare blog posts almost at the end of 2014! I wanted to change the subject a bit from the regular blog posts and talk about something that most developers either take for granted or take seriously (I am the latter) and that is the hardware they choose (or are given) to develop on. I think as I have become more experienced over time as a developer I have started to create a wish list in the back of my mind for the ideal developer platform I need to do my job and more importantly for me to enjoy developing on because too many times I have worked in roles where not enough emphasis or priority was placed on what the developers needed to do their job correctly.
I recently published an article on MSSQLTips.com titled Format Durations in SQL Server Analysis Services. For those who haven't read it I'll summarize it quickly: it explains how to create an MDX formula that formats durations into an [hh]:mm:ss format, where [hh] can go over 24 hours. For more detailed information, please check out the article itself. An example: However, I recently found out at a project that the formula doesn't really deal well with null values.
Just like last year, SQLServerCentral.com and Simple Talk are hosting the Tribal Awards. In their words: The Tribal Awards, co-hosted by Simple-Talk and SQLServerCentral, seek to recognize outstanding members of the SQL community. We want to highlight people who are currently leaders due to their writing, speaking, or general community presence. In the previous edition, I was nominated for Best New Community Voice, however this year I am very pleased to announce that this blog has made the final in the category Best Blog of the Year!
The recording of the webinar I did for the PASS BI virtual chapter is live! (Quick reminder: it was the same session as on the SQLServerDays: How to (not) torment your fellow SSIS developer?) I’m quite pleased with the recording, although I sound like a drunk German scientist sometimes. The slides can be downloaded here. Let me know in the comments if you like it or not!
I’ve written about using Selenium/WebDriver for automated testing in a C# environment in the past. Some of these posts may be dated, but I’ve covered everything from using the Selenium IDE, to using WebDriver and the PageObject pattern, to using SpecFlow to drive Selenium UI testing. But in this age of MVVM/MVC frameworks and libraries, do we really need every single test to hit the database? The Integration Testing Tax UI testing is widely accepted as slow and fragile.
I was recently contacted by the fine gents of Webucator, an online training services provider. In order to promote their SQL Server classes, they are doing a free series called SQL Server Solutions from the Web where they show different SQL Server solutions found in blog posts around the web. Essentially, they are turning blog posts into videos. They asked me if they could turn my blog post Beware the defaults!
I have the great pleasure to announce that I have been nominated for the "Author of the Year" award at the MSSQLTips website. This means however I have to persuade people to vote for me, hence this blog post 😉 You can vote for me at the following URL: http://www.mssqltips.com/MSSQLTipsAuthorVoting.asp Note that you can cast a vote each day until the end of December, so you can vote for me multiple times!
I’ve just returned from my fourth PASS Summit, and it was the best one to date. One of the highlights each year is the Women in Technology (WIT) Luncheaon on Thursday. This year was the 12th annual event, and I was invited to attend. PASS board vice president of marketing, Denise McInerney, sat down for a Q&A session with Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls CODE. Kimberly Bryant and Denise McInerney on stage
On November 17th 2PM CET I will redo my SQL Server Days presentation How to (not) torment your fellow SSIS developer? for the PASS BI virtual chapter. This is great news for the people who couldn't attend my session at the SQL Server Days and who still want to see it (I hope those people actually exist). What is even better is that the PASS BI virtual chapter afterwards always uploads the webinars to Youtube, so there won't be any excuse for not watching my session 🙂