Data Analysts, Crystal Reports and Sql Reporting Services Consultants » Integeration Services

Tutorial: Creating a Simple ETL Package

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 04:23:45 +0000

We recently did a hands on experience on using sql server 2008 Integration Services by creating a package. We followed the microsoft tutorial and found it a very good to get started with Integration Services 2008. We would like to share it with our reader, so lets enjoy;

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use SSIS Designer to create a simple Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services package. The package that you create takes data from a flat file, reformats the data, and then inserts the reformatted data into a fact table. In following lessons, the package will be expanded to demonstrate looping, package configurations, logging and error flow.

When you install the sample data that the tutorial uses, you also install the completed versions of the packages that you will create in each lesson of the tutorial. By using the completed packages, you can skip ahead and begin the tutorial at a later lesson if you like. If this is your first time working with packages or the new development environment, we recommend that you begin with Lesson1.

UDM Vrs Data Mart

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:44:52 +0000

We are writing some more on the topic of UDM Vs. Data Mart because of our hand on experiance, reconciled with some documented research.We have worked on creating large data text files, which were to be further exported into a business intelligence system. So data to be consumed in business intelligence may be stored in various formats. In these situations, we need data to be imported into a data mart before it can be utilized anywhere.

Sometimes data in OLTP may not have a full time connection and hence needed to be exported into Data Mart for further utilized by Business Intelligence via UDM. In some cases data from OLTP is exported via ftp, In our case we have been getting data via FTP which is stored into our data mart and afterwards transformed as per requirements utilizing Data transformation services / Integration services and stored into our data mart. After that this data is sent to Business Intelligence Systems.

In case of dirty data as mentioned above sometime data have to be cleaned from errors so it can be utilized into the Business intelligence, again data mart would be required. Here we would like to add an example we are getting data feeds of worldwide business contacts from somewhere via ftp. This data is then transformed and cleaned from errors stored in our data mart/Data war house, and then regularly uploaded into a system where people can utilize that. We are presenting a link for your information http://worldonline.biz/ and www.cheaprent.org.

The reason for giving this example is because of the need of data mart, In addition to that we are doing more work on stored data, as per people’s needs, to produce high value information.

In addion to our hands on experience, We are thankfull to Brian Larson for writing such a great book “Delivering business intelligence with SQL Server 2005″. We regularly consult this book for our projects.

At the end we would like also to add that data projects are not always similar and may require some tools in some situation and some other tools in other situations and the goal is always to accomplish the task.

Proactive Caching (Dimensions)

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:02:47 +0000

Source: SQL Server 2008 Books Online (May 2009)

Proactive caching provides automatic MOLAP cache creation and management for OLAP objects. The cubes immediately incorporate changes that are made to the data in the database, based upon notifications received from the database. The goal of proactive caching is to provide the performance of traditional MOLAP, while retaining the immediacy and ease of management offered by ROLAP.

A simple ProactiveCaching object is composed of: timing specification, and table notification. The timing specification defines the timeframe for updating the cache after a change notification has been received. The table notification defines the notification schema between the data table and the ProactiveCaching object.

Heterogeneous Databases and Legacy Databases

admin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:42:31 +0000

As we are driven by the goal making information technology understandable by business decision makers and end-users, therefore when ever we find any simple word made unnecessarily technical term, we made best efforts to make them original / understandable. So Legacy database is a group of heterogeneous data bases that combines different kind of data systems, such as relational or objects oriented databases, hierarchical databases, network databases, spreadsheets, multimedia databases, or file systems. The heterogeneous databases in legacy database may be connected by intra or inter computer networks.

Source: Data mining concepts and techniques by Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber

Integeration Services

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:19:52 +0000

Few words about integeration Services, It was introduced in SQL Server 2005, prior to that i.e in SQl Server 2000 it was a Data Transformation Services (DTS). Integeration Services has all the functionality of DTS plus more capabilities with less programming. Inaddition to that it has large performance boost over DTS and is even better in SQL server 2008. We will write more about integeration services, as we have added a separate category i.e Integeration Services.