This is not the first time I found non-intuitive issues with collation, Unicode and 8-bit strings with SQL Server, but this time I discovered (more precisely: one of my customers discovered and asked me…) a strange behavior that affects the query plan  Read more

I just added two suggestion items to my feedback for SSAS2005. The first suggestion is about the perspectives: it would be useful to select member filters and default members on each single perspective. Another important thing could be to be able to rename  Read more

I am trying the beta of SQL Refactor (available here ). It is really helpful to refactor the layout of a query and I like to do this in at least three scenarios: when I read a query written by other people, when I need to modify a query in a Reporting  Read more

I just faced the problem to connect an Analysis Services (2000 or 2005) to a SQL Server 2005 database using a OPENROWSET statement. If you face an “access denied” error (precisely, “The OLE DB provider “MSOLAP” for linked server “SERVERNAME” reported  Read more

I just answered to a newsgroup question about the use of views as fact tables to populate cubes. I am a strong supporter of the need to build a star schema before to build a UDM, while I understand that in some circumstances (few data, fast prototypes)  Read more

After a month of editing, I finally released my paper titled “The many-to-many revolution”. I copied in this post the introduction of the 84-page paper that is published (for free!) on a dedicated dimensional modeling page of SQLBI.EU web site. I would  Read more

I started to evaluate the use of linked dimension across different database on the same server. I encountered the first issue after a few minutes: when you link a dimension, VS editor create a dimension file that copies the structure of the dimension,  Read more

Alberto Ferrari wrote a nice post with a workaround to generate tables in different SQL Server 2005 schemas starting from a single Visio document. The trick includes a SQL script to do the magic. I hope that next Visio version would be able to do that  Read more

I’m approaching the review phase for a paper I wrote about advanced dimensional modeling with Analysis Services 2005 using many-to-many dimension relationships. Currently the paper has around 80 page (with many figures!) and covers 2 base techniques (base  Read more

I just opened the wiki on SQLBI.EU : it contains link to useful resources for BI solution development with SQL Server, so it covers SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and of course SQL Server itself. The wiki works well when there is large contribution, so please share  Read more