MS SQL Server is the software created by Microsoft. It includes a database engine and a number of features, which help with database development, maintenance and efficient use. These features include SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Analysis Services and other features such as Master Data Management. List of Articles in category »
It is possible to connect to many data sources using Power Query (more in this article) and SQL Server database is one of them. This article will tell you how to set connection to SQL Server table directly from Excel in few simple steps. Guide to Data Import and Connecting to SQL Server from Excel… Read More »
Correct table indexing in SQL Server is a base for good database performance during querying. You need to understand how SQL Server stores data into tables/indexes if you want to create appropriate sql indexes. It is also important to know how to approach these data correctly during querying. How Does SQL Server Organize Data Physically?… Read More »
This article will tell you about creating ER diagrams in SQL Server management studio. ER diagrams (entity relationship diagrams) describe static structure of database tables. Just like when building a house, the construction master needs the project documents, database specialists also need their ERD to build the database on strong foundation. ERD is part of… Read More »
SQL Error “Login failed for user <user name>. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection” is quite common. The problem is that SQL Server cannot identify user name. This is how the error message looks like. What are the Most Common Reasons? Incorrect login or authentication type (Windows vs. SQL) Login… Read More »
What I have for you here today is a different kind of stuff. We will take a look at what should BI developer working on Microsoft technologies be able to do. I put up together a list of knowledge and abilities which I consider important for this job. I gave each skill rating (1-10) according… Read More »
Import of Excel sheet or csv file into SQL Server is a quite common task. You can find a guide on how to do it below. Let’s have an excel file containing data on companies: Steplist – Import Excel to SQL Database Example 1) Data import… Read More »
When working with database objects, we may sometimes get into a situation when we want to change property of an object. For example change of data type in column of a table via table design in SQL Server management studio. If there is data in the table, SQL server should display an error message if… Read More »
This article should give you guide on how to perform Google analytics data import to database/database storage without need of programming. Why should we want something like that? Maybe because we need to create our own reports or combine Google analytics data with data from other source systems – for example internal factory systems. This… Read More »
This article is mainly for beginners getting to know SQL Server management studio. It is tool used by you as a user to communicate with SQL Server database engine from which you want to extract information. This is so called SQL Client application. It uses user interface to simply help mediate database commands. In factories,… Read More »
We now have well-prepared simple report after the 5th part of the series (Configuring parameter/filter in SSRS). This article is focused on report deployment in SSRS and describes how to get report on server so that other users can take a look at it. We will do a little configuration of the project and then… Read More »
We prepared simple report in previous part (Part 4 – Creating report SSRS). It displays sales data in form of a simple table displaying results of dataset which we also prepared in previous parts. We made a promise not to make the report too complicated but we still should do one thing. Report showing only… Read More »
Last 3 SSRS tutorials were kind of preparation phase, maybe a calm before a storm :). After creating SSRS project, defining data source and dataset, it is finally time to create a simple report in SSRS. Reporting services offers plenty of useful tools you can use to create nice and practical tables/graphs. We will not… Read More »
Lets rewind what happened in the last part of our series focused on SSRS report creating (Part 2 – Configuring Data source in SSRS). We saw how to create a connection to database via Data source connection manager. We used shared Data source with scope over whole BI project. Then we added reference to our… Read More »
While installing SQL Server, one of the parameters that is needed to be set during installation is Server collation. It is a parameter influencing the way in which SQL stores non-Unicode data. We may choose SQL Collation CZECH_CI_AS in Czech environments. While starting a database, we can also select collation that can be different to… Read More »
We took a look at creation of project and empty report in the BI tool SSDT (SQL Server Data tools) in previous part of the miniseries (Part 1 -SSRS project and report creation). This set up the ground for this part in which we will configure the report for data tools (SQL Server database in… Read More »
This miniseries focused on making a report in Reporting services will show you how to create SSRS project and report step by step. Let’s take this as a preparation of place where we will create the report itself. To even start working with Reporting Services tool, we need: SQL Server Data tools 2015 (or older)… Read More »
What you will find below is a map of all components and tasks which are part of SSIS Project framed in SQL Server Data Tools 2015. Particular components and tasks can be found in SSIS Toolbox. I plan on connecting particular definitions in this map with BI dictionary. If you will be interested, I can… Read More »
Surrogate key is term mostly used in data warehouse environments. We might not come by this term in application production databases simply because there is no need to generate these keys. We can do just fine with primary keys. It is much needed to create surrogate keys in data warehouses for many reasons, read further.… Read More »
I described plus and cons of SQL Server Express edition in the article SQL Server Express for Beginners. If you decided to try Express and you wonder how to install it, go ahead and take a look at this article. If you would like to inspect particular SQL server editions more thoroughly, take a look… Read More »
I finally got to MS SQL Server 2016 – Release candidate 3 installation during weekend. First thing I did was focusing on news regarding Reporting services 2016. Microsoft presents its new reporting services as a big thing full of innovations. It looks attractive, sorted and when you look closely you can see resemblance to Power… Read More »