SQL Saturday 29 Birmingham

We just finished up our SQL Saturday here in Birmingham Alabama. It was number 29 in the list of SQL Saturdays. First off let me cover some supporting material for the two sessions I gave. The first was an introduction to Microsoft’s new self service BI tool, PowerPivot. Attendees can download my slides here: PowerPivot Slides You can also see all my posts so far on PowerPivot at https://arcanecode.com/category/powerpivot/ or by picking PowerPivot from the drop down over on the right side of this blog.

My second session of the day was an introduction to SSIS. Step by step instructions, the sample project, and the slide deck can all be found on my Code Gallery site. At the end we got a bit rushed for time, hopefully some of your questions can be answered from some of my past posts on SSIS. If not feel free to send me an e-mail (rcain at comframe.com or arcanecode at gmail.com) and I’ll see what I can do to help.

Attendees of both sessions may also find my Introduction to Data Warehousing/Business Intelligence slide deck helpful to clarify some BI terminology.

In my roles as speaker, volunteer, and event planner I had little time to take pictures, but I did grab a few at the very end of the day, I thought I’d share them here:

Some lucky winners of books looking over the remaining stack to pick out their prize.

John Baldwin, our fearless leader is in the grey shirt all the way on the right.

Obligatory crowd shot. Dividers broke this big room down to 4 rooms where we had our sessions.

One more crowd shot, showing some of the higher end swag including a Wii, a Garmin GPS, multiple

copies of Office and Windows 7, and two copies of the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book I coauthored.

My role in event planning was acting as the speaker coordinator. Finding quality people willing to travel to Birmingham, on their own time and expense, to give presentations. Thanks to Sven Aelterman, Kevin Boles, Louis Davidson, Janis Griffin, Kevin Grohoske, Geoff Hiten, Rodney Landrum, Vincent Mayfield, Aaron Nelson, Barry Ralston, Joe Webb and Jim Wooley. It was their presentations that helped us draw the big crowd we did.

Speaking of the crowd, much thanks to all of you who attended. The folks in my sessions were very attentive, asked many good questions, and kept the discussion lively and interesting. I’m glad all of you came and hope to see you all next year.

I also would be remiss if I didn’t thank all of our sponsors. Without their donations we would not have been able to put on the event. Microsoft, Teksouth, Bit Wizards, Confio, Redgate, Attunity, Telerik, Intellinet, CozyRoc, Wrox, TekSystems and O’Reilly Publishing and to the SQL PASS organization.

I should also give personal note of thanks to my employer COMFRAME, for putting up with my extended lunches and letting me juggle my schedule to run errands and do other planning activities and presentation prep time.

Finally a few last thanks and kudos are definitely in order. The first should go to Vito Amato and his merry band of volunteers. They kept everyone in cold drinks, helped the speakers with their needs, answered attendees questions, checked folks in at the door, and in general did everything that needed to be done to keep the event running smoothly.

A big thanks and congratulations to John Baldwin, our fearless leader, and his right hand man Morgan Smith for taking the leadership to plan and organize the event. They worked long and hard to make the event the success it was.

If you want to keep the fun and education continuing, we’d love to have you join us at our monthly user group meetings, http://www.steelcitysql.org/. Thanks for a great SQL Saturday, and I can’t wait for next year’s!

Pragmatic Works Free SQL Server Training

Just wanted to mention the Pragmatic Works company did a week of free webinars. You can view all of these which cover a wide variety of subjects. The sessions include:

Introduction to Managing a SQL Server Database by Jorge Segarra
Beginning T-SQL by Patrick LeBlanc
The Modern Resume: Building Your Brand by Brian Knight
How to Become An Exceptional DBA by Brad McGehee
Fundamentals of SSIS by Brian Knight
0 to Cube in 60 Minutes (SSAS) by Brian Knight
Trouble Shooting SQL Server by Christian Bolton
Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services by Devin Knight

To get access to the seminars, simply go to:

http://www.pragmaticworks.com/resources/webinars/February2010Webinar.aspx

Alabama Code Camp Mobile 2010

Last Saturday was the Alabama Code Camp, held in Mobile AL. For those unfamiliar with the Alabama Code Camps, we hold on average two a year, and they shift from city to city with different user groups acting as the host group. Other cities include Huntsville, Birmingham, and Montgomery. This time though the Lower Alabama Dot Net User Group under the leadership of Ryan Duclos hosted, and what a great event it was. Everything ran smoothly, there was plenty of drinks and pizza to go around, and some good swag to boot. A big congrats to Ryan and his team of volunteers for a great event, also thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring and the University of South Alabama for the venue.

I was kept busy at this code camp, doing three sessions. The first session was “Introduction to Microsoft PowerPivot”. The slide deck can be found at https://arcanecode.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/powerpivot_long.pdf. To see all my PowerPivot posts, simply pick it in the categories to the right or use this link: https://arcanecode.com/category/powerpivot/.

My second session was on Full Text Searching. You can find code samples and the PDF for the presentation at my code gallery site, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SqlServerFTS.

The final presentation was an introduction to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. Here is the link to the presentations slides in PDF format. As promised in the session I added the additional information for the Kimball Group book.

A quick apology for my delay in posting, a nasty head cold has had me in Zombie land since I got back. Thanks to all who attended, I appreciate you being very interactive, lots of questions, and very attentive. I look forward to the next time Mobile hosts the Alabama Code Camp.

PowerPivot for Excel 2010 at the Steel City SQL Users Group January 19, 2009

Today I am at the Steel City SQL Users Group, presenting on Microsoft’s newest BI Tool, PowerPivot.

The slide deck for this meeting can be found at:

https://arcanecode.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/powerpivot_long.pdf

To see all my posts so far on PowerPivot, you can use the link below to filter.

https://arcanecode.com/category/powerpivot/

Thanks for coming!

Introducing Microsoft PowerPivot

What is PowerPivot? Well according to Microsoft:

“PowerPivot is Microsoft Self-Service Business Intelligence”

I can see from the glazed looks you are giving your monitor that was clear as mud. So let’s step back a bit and first define what exactly is Business Intelligence.

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence, often referred to as simply “BI”, is all about taking data you already have and making sense of it. Being able to take that information and turn it from a raw jumble of individual facts and transform it into knowledge that you can take informed actions on.

In every organization there is already someone who is doing BI, although they may not realize it. Microsoft (and many IT departments) refer to this person as “that guy”. A power user, who grabs data from anyplace he (or she) can get it, then uses tools like Excel or Access to slice it, dice it, and analyze it. This person might be an actual Business Analyst, but more often it’s someone for who BI is not their main job. Some common examples of people doing their own BI today are production managers, accountants, engineers, or sales managers, all who need information to better do their job. Let’s look at an illustration that will make it a bit clearer.

In this example, put yourself in the role of a sales manager. You have gotten IT to extract all of your sales orders for the last several years into an Excel spreadsheet. In order to determine how well your sales people are doing, you need to measure their performance. You’ve decided that the amount sold will be a good measure, and use Excel to give you totals.

In BI terms, the column “Total Sales” is known as a measure, or sometimes a fact, as it measures something, in this case the sales amount. The grand total sales amount is often called an aggregation, as it totals up the individual rows of data that IT gave us. But now you might be wondering why Andy’s sales are so low? Well, now you want to dig deeper and look at sales by year.

In BI terms, the names of the sales people are a dimension. Dimensions are often either a “who” (who sold stuff) or a “what” (what stuff did we sell). Places (where was it sold) and dates (when was it sold) are also common dimensions. In this case the sales dates across the top (2007, 2008, 2009) are a date dimension. When we use two or more dimensions to look at our measures, we have a pivot table.

Now we can see a picture emerging. It’s obvious that Andy must have been hired as a new salesperson in late 2008, since he shows no sales for 2007 and very small amount in 2008. But for Paul and Kimberly we can look at something called trends in the BI world. Kimberly shows a nice even trend, rising slowly over the last three years and earns a gold star as our top performer.

By being able to drill down into our data, we spot another trend that was not readily obvious when just looking at the grand totals. Paul has been trending downward so fast the speed of light looks slow. Clearly then we now have information to take action on, commonly known as actionable intelligence.

So remind me, why do we need PowerPivot?

As you can see in the above example, “that guy” in your company clearly has a need to look at this data in order to do his job. Not only does he need to review it, he also has the issue of how to share this information with his co-workers. Unfortunately in the past the tools available to “that guy” have had some drawbacks. The two main tools used by our analyst have been either Excel, or a complete BI solution involving a data warehouse and SQL Server Analysis Services.

Excel’s main limitations center around the volume of data needed to do good analysis. Excel has limits to the number of rows it can store, and for large datasets a spreadsheet can consume equally large amounts of disk space. This makes the spreadsheet difficult to share with coworkers. In addition mathematical functions like aggregations could be slow. On the good side, Excel is readily available to most workers, and a solution can be put together fairly quickly.

A full blown BI solution has some major benefits over the Excel solution. A data warehouse is created, and then SQL Server Analysis Services (often abbreviated as SSAS) is used to precalculate aggregations for every possible way an analyst might wish to look at them. The data is then very easy to share via tools like Excel and SQL Server Reporting Services. While very robust and powerful solution, it does have some drawbacks. It can take quite a bit of time to design, code, and implement both the data warehouse and the analysis services pieces of the solution. In addition it can also be expensive for IT to implement such a system.

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, it’s PowerPivot!

PowerPivot combines the best of both worlds. In fact, it’s not one tool but two: PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010, and PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010. What’s the difference you ask? Good question.

PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010

PowerPivot acts as an Add-on for Excel 2010, and in many ways is quite revolutionary. First, it brings the full power of SQL Server Analysis Services right into Excel. All of the speed and power of SSAS is available right on your desktop. Second, it uses a compression technology that allows vast amounts of data to be saved in a minimal amount of space. Millions of rows of data can now be stored, sorted, and aggregated in a reasonable amount of disk space with great speed.

PowerPivot can draw its data from a wide variety of sources. As you might expect, it can pull from almost any database. Additionally it can draw data from news feeds, SQL Server Reporting Services, other Excel sheets, it can even be typed in manually if need be.

Another issue that often faces the business analyst is the freshness of the data. The information is only as good as the date it was last imported into Excel. Traditionally “that guy” only got extracts of the database as IT had time, since it was often a time consuming process. PowerPivot addresses this through its linked tables feature. PowerPivot will remember where your data came from, and with one simple button click can refresh the spreadsheet with the latest information.

Because PowerPivot sits inside Microsoft Excel, it not only can create basic pivot tables but has all the full featured functionality of Excel at its disposal. It can format pivot tables in a wide array of styles, create pivot charts and graphs, and combine these together into useful dashboards. Additionally PowerPivot has a rich set of mathematical functionally, combining the existing functions already in Excel with an additional set of functions called Data Analysis eXpressions or DAX.

PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010

PowerPivot for Excel 2010 clearly solves several issues around the issue of analysis. It allows users to quickly create spreadsheets, pivot tables, charts, and more in a compact amount of space. If you recall though, creation was only half of “that guys” problem. The other half was sharing his analysis with the rest of his organization. That’s where PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 comes into play.

Placing a PowerPivot Excel workbook in SharePoint 2010 not only enables traditional file sharing, but also activates several additional features. First, the spreadsheet is hosted right in the web browser. Thus users who might not have made the transition to Excel 2010 can still use the PowerPivot created workbook, slicing and filtering the data to get the information they require.

Data can also be refreshed on an automated, scheduled basis. This ensures the data is always up to date when doing analysis. Dashboards can also be created from the contents of a worksheet and displayed in SharePoint. Finally these PowerPivot created worksheets can be used as data sources for such tools as SQL Server Reporting Services.

Limitations

First, let me preface this by saying as of this writing all of the components are either in CTP (Community Technology Preview, a pre-beta) or Beta state. Thus there could be some changes between now and their final release next year.

To use the PowerPivot for Excel 2010 components, all you have to have is Excel 2010 and the PowerPivot add-in. If you want to share the workbook and get all the rich functionality SharePoint has to offer, you’ll have to have SharePoint 2010, running Excel Services and PowerPivot 2010 Services. You’ll also have to have SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services running on the SharePoint 2010 box. Since you’ll have to have a SQL Server instance installed to support SharePoint this is not a huge limitation, especially since SSAS comes with SQL Server at no extra cost.

One thing I wish to make clear, SharePoint 2010 itself can run using any version of SQL Server from SQL Server 2005 on. It is the PowerPivot service that requires 2008 R2 Analysis Services.

One other important item to note: at some point the load upon the SharePoint 2010 server may grow too large if especially complex analysis is being done. Fortunately SharePoint 2010 ships with several tools that allow administrators to monitor the load and plan accordingly. At the point where the load is too big, it is a clear indication it’s time to transition from a PowerPivot solution to a full BI solution using a data warehouse and SQL Server Analysis Services.

What does PowerPivot mean for business users?

For business users, and especially “that guy”, it means complex analysis tools can be created in a short amount of time. Rich functionality makes it easier to spot trends and produce meaningful charts and graphs. It also means this information can be shared with others in the organization easily, without imposing large burdens on the corporate e-mail system or local file sharing mechanisms.

No longer will users be dependent on IT for their analysis, they will have the power to create everything they need on their own, truly bringing “self service BI” to fruition.

What does PowerPivot mean for Business Intelligence IT Pros?

The first reaction many BI developers have when hearing about PowerPivot is “oh no, this is going to put me out of a job!” Far from it, I firmly believe PowerPivot will create even more work for BI Professionals like myself.

As upper management grows to rely on the information provided by PowerPivot, they will also begin to understand the true value BI can bring to an organization. Selling a new BI solution into an organization where none currently exists can be difficult, as it can be hard to visualize how such a solution would work and the value it brings. PowerPivot allows BI functionality to be brought into an organization at a low development cost, proving the value of BI with minimal investment. Thus when there is a need to implement a larger, traditional BI project those same managers will be more forthcoming with the dollars.

Second, as users pull more and more data, they are going to want that data better organized than they will find in their current transactional business systems. This will in turn spur the need to create many new data warehouses. Likewise the IT department will also want data warehouses created, to reduce the load placed on those same transactional business systems.

I also foresee PowerPivot being used by BI Pros themselves to create solutions. The database structure of many transactional database systems can be difficult to understand even for experienced IT people, much less users. BI Pros can use PowerPivot to add a layer of abstraction between the database and the users, allowing business analysts to do their job without having to learn the complexity of a database system.

BI Pros can also use PowerPivot to implement quick turnaround solutions for customers, bringing more value for the customer’s dollar. When a BI Pro can prove him (or her) self by providing rich functionality in a short time frame it’s almost always the case they are brought back in for multiple engagements.

PowerPivot also provides great value to BI Pros who are employed full time in an enterprise organization. They can create solutions much quicker than before, freeing them up to do other valuable tasks. In addition PowerPivot solutions can provide a “stop gap” solution, pushing the date at which the organization needs to spend the dollars for a full blown BI solution and allowing IT to plan better.

Finally I see great value in PowerPivot as a prototyping tool for larger BI projects. Now users can see their data, interact with it, analyze it, and ensure the required measures and dimensions are present before proceeding with the larger project.

I’ll reiterate, if anything I believe PowerPivot will create an explosion of work for the Business Intelligence Professional.

Where can I learn more?

Well right here for one. I have become quite interested in PowerPivot since seeing it at the SQL PASS 2009 Summit. I think it will be a valuable tool for both myself and my customers. This will be the first of many blog posts to come on PowerPivot. I am also beginning a series of presentations on PowerPivot for local user groups and code camp events. The first will be Saturday, November 21^st 2009 at the SharePoint Saturday in Birmingham Alabama, but there will be many more to come. (If you’d like me to come speak at your group just shoot me an e-mail and we’ll see what we can arrange.)

There’s also the PowerPivot site itself:

http://powerpivot.com/

I’ve also found a small handful of blogs on PowerPivot, listed in no particular order:

Summary

Thanks for sticking with me, I know this was a rather long blog post but PowerPivot has a lot of rich functionality to offer. While PowerPivot is still in the CTP/Beta stage as of this writing, I see more and more interest in the community, which will continue to grow as PowerPivot moves closer to release. I hope this post has set you off on the right step and you’ll continue to come back for more information.

Populating a Kimball Date Dimension

I’m a big fan of the Kimball method of Data Warehousing. A common task most of us setting up a new Data Warehouse face is creating a Date Dimension. In their book, “The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset”, they have an example of a good date dimension table in their books sample code. My complaint though was not so much with the layout itself, I liked it and found it fairly complete. Instead it was the method they chose to load it. They used an Excel spreadsheet, then a SQL Server Integration Services package to read the Excel file and load the date dimension table.

To me this approach has a couple of drawbacks. First, if you are doing all the loading on the server itself, you may not have Excel loaded. Thus you may be faced with the headache of creating the sheet then figuring out how to get it to a location the server can read. Second, when you go to add more dates in the future, you have to go into the spreadsheet and reset everything, removing what was there before. It can also be quite a headache to go back several years from know and find both SSIS packages and that Excel spreadsheet. Plus after that time changes may be made to both Excel and SSIS that make that solution no longer workable. Finally quite often it’s a DBA setting up the warehouse, and I’ve found there are still a few DBAs who are uncomfortable relying on SSIS, although I’m happy to say that number continues to shrink.

A T-SQL solution was clearly, to me anyway, the superior answer for both ease of use and long term stability. I assumed that as popular as the Kimball method is, someone would have already created a routine to load their style of date dimension, but some Binging and Googling around proved fruitless. I did find some code for loading some very simple date dimensions, but nothing as complete as the Kimball design. So, relishing a good coding challenge, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. Below is the fruit of my labor, a script for loading a Kimball like date dimension. All you have to do is set the begin and end dates, indicate the offset for your fiscal year, and let ‘er rip. You can easily go back and add more dates by just adjusting the begin and end times.

A few things you should note. First, I did make a few slight modifications to the standard Kimball date dimension table as found in the previously mentioned book. They have a column titled “DateName” which holds the date as a string in YYYY/MM/DD format. As long as I was putting the date in, I decided to add string versions of the date for the US and Europe. These are in MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY formats and the columns are named “DateNameUS” and “DateNameEU” (for European Union) respectively.

Their table also had an audit key, used presumably by the SSIS package. I didn’t really see the need for an audit key for a date table, so I changed it to an identity column so I could have a secondary surrogate key if I needed it, just something to count the number of date rows easily and track the order they were inserted in.

One final, but very important distinction. I was in a post conference session taught by Erik Veerman at SQL PASS 2009. In it he mentioned using Dim and Fact schemas, thus you’d have [Dim].[Date] instead of [dbo].[DimDate]. I liked the idea as it was something I’d been considering myself, so in this version that is what I did. If you use the more traditional naming format of dbo.DimDate you’ll need to tweak the code.

Below is the code to load the Date Dimension table, which is my creation. Under it I placed my modified version of the Kimball Date Dimension table. It’s core code came from the sample code mentioned in the first paragraph then was modified by me. I include it for completeness.

Update: A few readers aptly pointed out I’d missed replacing a static date field when I worked the final version of the code. Made the change to replace the static date with @DateCounter.

Code Sample 1 – Script to load a date dimension.

/*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Loads a Date Dimension                                                    */
/*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

-- A few notes, this code does nothing to the existing table, no deletes
-- are triggered before hand. Because the DateKey is uniquely indexed,
-- it will simply produce errors if you attempt to insert duplicates.
-- You can however adjust the Begin/End dates and rerun to safely add
-- new dates to the table every year.
--
-- If the begin date is after the end date, no errors occur but nothing
-- happens as the while loop never executes.

SET NOCOUNT ON -- turn off all the 1 row inserted messages

-- Hold our dates
DECLARE @BeginDate DATETIME
DECLARE @EndDate DATETIME

-- Holds a flag so we can determine if the date is the last day of month
DECLARE @LastDayOfMon CHAR(1)

-- Number of months to add to the date to get the current Fiscal date
DECLARE @FiscalYearMonthsOffset INT   

-- These two counters are used in our loop.
DECLARE @DateCounter DATETIME    --Current date in loop
DECLARE @FiscalCounter DATETIME  --Fiscal Year Date in loop

-- Set the date to start populating and end populating
SET @BeginDate = '01/01/2008'
SET @EndDate = '12/31/2010' 

-- Set this to the number of months to add to the current date to get
-- the beginning of the Fiscal year. For example, if the Fiscal year
-- begins July 1, put a 6 there.
-- Negative values are also allowed, thus if your 2010 Fiscal year
-- begins in July of 2009, put a -6.
SET @FiscalYearMonthsOffset = 6

-- Start the counter at the begin date
SET @DateCounter = @BeginDate

WHILE @DateCounter <= @EndDate
      BEGIN
            -- Calculate the current Fiscal date as an offset of
            -- the current date in the loop
            SET @FiscalCounter = DATEADD(m, @FiscalYearMonthsOffset, @DateCounter)

            -- Set value for IsLastDayOfMonth
            IF MONTH(@DateCounter) = MONTH(DATEADD(d, 1, @DateCounter))
               SET @LastDayOfMon = 'N'
            ELSE
               SET @LastDayOfMon = 'Y'  

            -- add a record into the date dimension table for this date
            INSERT  INTO [Dim].[Date]
                    (
                      [DateKey]
                    , [FullDate]
                    , [DateName]
                    , [DateNameUS]
                    , [DateNameEU]
                    , [DayOfWeek]
                    , [DayNameOfWeek]
                    , [DayOfMonth]
                    , [DayOfYear]
                    , [WeekdayWeekend]
                    , [WeekOfYear]
                    , [MonthName]
                    , [MonthOfYear]
                    , [IsLastDayOfMonth]
                    , [CalendarQuarter]
                    , [CalendarYear]
                    , [CalendarYearMonth]
                    , [CalendarYearQtr]
                    , [FiscalMonthOfYear]
                    , [FiscalQuarter]
                    , [FiscalYear]
                    , [FiscalYearMonth]
                    , [FiscalYearQtr]
                    )
            VALUES  (
                      ( YEAR(@DateCounter) * 10000 ) + ( MONTH(@DateCounter)
                                                         * 100 )
                      + DAY(@DateCounter)  --DateKey
                    , @DateCounter -- FullDate
                    , CAST(YEAR(@DateCounter) AS CHAR(4)) + '/'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(mm, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) + '/'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(dd, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) --DateName
                    , RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(mm, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) + '/'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(dd, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2)  + '/'
                      + CAST(YEAR(@DateCounter) AS CHAR(4))--DateName
                    , RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(dd, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) + '/'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(mm, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2)  + '/'
                      + CAST(YEAR(@DateCounter) AS CHAR(4))--DateName
                    , DATEPART(dw, @DateCounter) --DayOfWeek
                    , DATENAME(dw, @DateCounter) --DayNameOfWeek
                    , DATENAME(dd, @DateCounter) --DayOfMonth
                    , DATENAME(dy, @DateCounter) --DayOfYear
                    , CASE DATENAME(dw, @DateCounter)
                        WHEN 'Saturday' THEN 'Weekend'
                        WHEN 'Sunday' THEN 'Weekend'
                        ELSE 'Weekday'
                      END --WeekdayWeekend
                    , DATENAME(ww, @DateCounter) --WeekOfYear
                    , DATENAME(mm, @DateCounter) --MonthName
                    , MONTH(@DateCounter) --MonthOfYear
                    , @LastDayOfMon --IsLastDayOfMonth
                    , DATENAME(qq, @DateCounter) --CalendarQuarter
                    , YEAR(@DateCounter) --CalendarYear
                    , CAST(YEAR(@DateCounter) AS CHAR(4)) + '-'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(mm, @DateCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) --CalendarYearMonth
                    , CAST(YEAR(@DateCounter) AS CHAR(4)) + 'Q' + DATENAME(qq, @DateCounter) --CalendarYearQtr
                    , MONTH(@FiscalCounter) --[FiscalMonthOfYear]
                    , DATENAME(qq, @FiscalCounter) --[FiscalQuarter]
                    , YEAR(@FiscalCounter) --[FiscalYear]
                    , CAST(YEAR(@FiscalCounter) AS CHAR(4)) + '-'
                      + RIGHT('00' + RTRIM(CAST(DATEPART(mm, @FiscalCounter) AS CHAR(2))), 2) --[FiscalYearMonth]
                    , CAST(YEAR(@FiscalCounter) AS CHAR(4)) + 'Q' + DATENAME(qq, @FiscalCounter) --[FiscalYearQtr]
                    )

            -- Increment the date counter for next pass thru the loop
            SET @DateCounter = DATEADD(d, 1, @DateCounter)
      END

SET NOCOUNT ON -- turn the annoying messages back on

-- Select all rows inserted for the final year as a sanity check
SELECT  *
FROM    [Dim].[Date]
WHERE DateKey > (YEAR(@EndDate) * 10000)

Code Sample 2 – Modified Kimball code to create a Date dimension.

/* Make sure the Dim schema exists */
IF SCHEMA_ID('Dim') IS NULL
   EXECUTE('CREATE SCHEMA [Dim] AUTHORIZATION [dbo]')
GO

/* Drop table DimDate */
IF EXISTS ( SELECT  *
            FROM    dbo.sysobjects
            WHERE   id = OBJECT_ID(N'[Dim].[Date]')
                    AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, N'IsUserTable') = 1 )
   DROP TABLE [Dim].[Date]
GO

/* Create table DimDate */
CREATE TABLE [Dim].[Date]
       ( [DateKey] BIGINT NOT NULL
       , [FullDate] DATETIME NULL
       , [DateName] CHAR(11) NULL
       , [DateNameUS] CHAR(11) NULL   --US Date FORMAT, MM/DD/YYYY
       , [DateNameEU] CHAR(11) NULL   --European Union Date Format DD/MM/YYYY
       , [DayOfWeek] TINYINT NULL
       , [DayNameOfWeek] CHAR(10) NULL
       , [DayOfMonth] TINYINT NULL
       , [DayOfYear] SMALLINT NULL
       , [WeekdayWeekend] CHAR(7) NULL
       , [WeekOfYear] TINYINT NULL
       , [MonthName] CHAR(10) NULL
       , [MonthOfYear] TINYINT NULL
       , [IsLastDayOfMonth] CHAR(1) NULL
       , [CalendarQuarter] TINYINT NULL
       , [CalendarYear] SMALLINT NULL
       , [CalendarYearMonth] CHAR(7) NULL
       , [CalendarYearQtr] CHAR(7) NULL
       , [FiscalMonthOfYear] TINYINT NULL
       , [FiscalQuarter] TINYINT NULL
       , [FiscalYear] INT NULL
       , [FiscalYearMonth] CHAR(9) NULL
       , [FiscalYearQtr] CHAR(8) NULL
       , [AuditKey] BIGINT IDENTITY NOT NULL
       , CONSTRAINT [PK_DimDate] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [DateKey] )
       )
ON     [PRIMARY]
GO

EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Table Type', @value = N'Dimension',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date'
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'View Name', @value = N'Date',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date'
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Date dimension contains one row for every day, beginning at 1/1/2000. There may also be rows for "hasn''t happened yet."',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date'
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Used in schemas',
  @value = N'Sales (3 roles); Finance; Currency Rates; Sales Quota (2 roles; one at Cal Qtr level)',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date'

GO

INSERT  INTO [Dim].[Date]
        ( DateKey
        , FullDate
        , [DateName]
        , [DateNameUS]
        , [DateNameEU]
        , [DayOfWeek]
        , DayNameOfWeek
        , [DayOfMonth]
        , [DayOfYear]
        , WeekdayWeekend
        , WeekOfYear
        , [MonthName]
        , MonthOfYear
        , IsLastDayOfMonth
        , CalendarQuarter
        , CalendarYear
        , CalendarYearMonth
        , CalendarYearQtr
        , FiscalMonthOfYear
        , FiscalQuarter
        , FiscalYear
        , FiscalYearMonth
        , FiscalYearQtr
        )
VALUES  ( -1
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , 'Unknown'
        , 'Unknown'
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , NULL
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , NULL
        , 'N'
        , NULL
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , 'Unknown'
        , NULL
        , NULL
        , NULL
        , 'Unknown'
        , 'Unknown'
        )
GO

EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Surrogate primary key', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Full date as a SQL date (time=00:00:00)', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FullDate' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Standard Date Format of YYYY/MM/DD', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Standard US Date Format of MM/DD/YYYY', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateNameUS' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Standard European Union Date Format of DD/MM/YYYY', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateNameEU' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Number of the day of week; Sunday = 1', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Day name of week', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DayNameOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Number of the day in the month', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Number of the day in the year', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Is today a weekday or a weekend', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'WeekdayWeekend' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Week of year', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'WeekOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description', @value = N'Month name',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'MonthName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Month of year', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'MonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Is this the last day of the calendar month?',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'IsLastDayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Calendar quarter', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Calendar year', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Calendar year and month', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'CalendarYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Calendar year and quarter', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'CalendarYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Fiscal month of year (1..12). FY starts in July',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalMonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Fiscal quarter', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Fiscal year. Fiscal year begins in July.',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Fiscal year and month', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'Fiscal year and quarter', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Description',
  @value = N'What process loaded this row?', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'AuditKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'FK To',
  @value = N'DimAudit.AuditKey', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'AuditKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'20041123', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DateKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'11/23/2004', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FullDate' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'23-Nov-2004', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DateName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'1..7',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'Sunday',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DayNameOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'1..31',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'1..365',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'Weekday, Weekend', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'WeekdayWeekend' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'1..52 or 53', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'WeekOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'November', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'MonthName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'1, 2, …, 12', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'MonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'Y, N',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'IsLastDayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'1, 2, 3, 4', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'2004',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'2004-01',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'2004Q1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'1, 2, …, 12', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalMonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'1, 2, 3, 4', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values', @value = N'2004',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'FY2004-01', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Example Values',
  @value = N'FY2004Q1', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DayNameOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'WeekdayWeekend' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'WeekOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'MonthName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'MonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'IsLastDayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalMonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'SCD  Type', @value = N'1',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FullDate' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'DayNameOfWeek' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DayOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'WeekdayWeekend' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'WeekOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'MonthName' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'MonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'IsLastDayOfMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'CalendarYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalMonthOfYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalQuarter' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'FiscalYear' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearMonth' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System', @value = N'Derived',
  @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE',
  @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'FiscalYearQtr' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Source System',
  @value = N'Derived in ETL', @level0type = N'SCHEMA', @level0name = N'Dim',
  @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date', @level2type = N'COLUMN',
  @level2name = N'AuditKey' ;
EXEC sys.sp_addextendedproperty @name = N'Comments',
  @value = N'In the form: yyyymmdd', @level0type = N'SCHEMA',
  @level0name = N'Dim', @level1type = N'TABLE', @level1name = N'Date',
  @level2type = N'COLUMN', @level2name = N'DateKey' ;
GO

TechMixer University – SSIS for Developers

In addition to help recruit speakers, I also had the privilege of speaking at TechMixer University 2009.

The slide deck and main demo can be found at my Code Gallery site:

https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=SSISForDevs&ReleaseId=2883

The calling of SSIS from .Net demo can be found at:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ssisfromnet

Thanks to everyone who attended TechMixer University. I look forward to seeing you next year!

SQL Saturday Redmond – October 3 2009

I am fortunate enough to be able to give three presentations at Redmond WA’s SQL Saturday event. The first session is “Introduciton to Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence”. Here is the PDF slide deck for that presentation. (Right click and save as if you want to save a copy for later reference).

The second presentation is SQL Server Full Text Searching. You can find the slide deck in PDF format as well as sample code at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SqlServerFTS.

The final presentation of the day was Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services. The sample project, slide deck, and step by step instructions can be found at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/introssis . In addition I also showed how to call SSIS from a .Net application. You can find that sample at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ssisfromnet .

Intro to DW/BI at the Steel City SQL Users Group

Tonight I’ll be presenting “Introduction to Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence” at the Steel City SQL users group, right here in Birmingham Alabama. If you attended my Huntsville presentation last week, I’ve already added some new slides and revised the deck, so it will be worth another look.

My slide deck is IntroToDataWarehouse.pdf . Come join us tonight at 6 pm at New Horizons, there will be pizza and fun for all.

UPDATE: Before the presentation I was showing a video of Sara Ford jumping off a tower to support CodePlex. Got tons of laughs so here’s a link to the video:

http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2009/09/14/my-codeplex-jump-from-tallest-building-in-the-southern-hemisphere-the-full-video.aspx

Intro to DW/BI at the Huntsville User Group meeting

Tonight at the Huntsville User group I am presenting “Introduction to Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence”. The slide deck for my presentation is now available in PDF format at the link below. If you have attended this presentation in the past you may wish to download the slides again as I have updated it with new information.

IntroToDataWarehousing

Data Warehousing / BI at the next HuntUG Meeting!

Business Intelligence is one of the most in demand skill sets right now. Do you want to know more about it? Be guided through all the terminology and concepts? Do you live in the Huntsville Alabama area? Well here’s your golden opportunity!

On Tuesday, September 8th I will be presenting “Introduction to Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence” at the next meeting of the Huntsville User Group. I’ll demystify all the terms around DW/BI and give a demonstration of the Microsoft SQL Server tools used in the DW/BI process. See their site for meeting time and directions.

Welcome to COMFRAME

I admit to being remiss lately, my poor blog has been neglected for these past few weeks. I can only plead mea culpa and explain.

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity placed before me that I simply could not refuse. I’d been happy at my old job and wasn’t looking, but a good friend of mine works for a great company called COMFRAME. They are a consulting firm that does a variety of things, including Enterprise Project Management, .Net and Java development projects, SOA, and most important to me, Business Intelligence.

To make a long story short my friend took a lesson from the Godfather movies and “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse”. I am now a COMFRAME employee! The work is very exciting, I’ll be an architect on a BI project that is using Silverlight 3 for it’s front end. We are working with data from Microsoft Project, not only that but it’s the world’s biggest implementation of Project Server, so I’ll get to work with the fine folks at Microsoft even more closely. We’re also a Microsoft Partner, which will give me new avenues for relationships that will compliment my MVP.

I got to meet the customer this week, although brief they seemed very easy to work with, and nice as well. I also got to meet the development team I’ll be working with, I’m impressed with the work they’ve done so far and can’t wait to roll up my sleeves and dive in.

I’ve had a crazy time wrapping up my old job and starting my new one, hopefully I can get back to regular blogging soon. I’ve been doing a lot with SSIS and SSAS which will give me lots of good material to talk about, not to mention any Silverlight 3 work I get to explore.

SQL Saturday 7 – Introduction to Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence

At the Birmingham SQL Saturday 2009 I am presenting “Introduction to Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence”.

You can download the slide deck for this presentation in PDF format.

Any sample code came from either my Intro to SSIS presentation or the book Programming SQL Server 2008.

Introduction To Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence

At the Atlanta SQL Saturday 2009 one of the presentations I am doing is “Introduction to Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence”.

You can download the slide deck for this presentation in PDF format.

Any sample code came from either my Intro to SSIS presentation or the book Programming SQL Server 2008.

Generating a PDF file from a Reporting Services Report Viewer Control

In yesterday’s post, I demonstrated how to generate a SQL Server Reporting Services report without having to have SQL Server Reporting Services. The sample application used the Microsoft Report Viewer control to display the report. A common need in business is to generate documents, such as PDFs, that will later be archived. It turns out if you are using a report viewer control, this is easy to do programmatically.

First, you need to add one using statement to the top of your class, in addition to the others that were added yesterday.

using System.IO;

Next, we only need a few lines of code to generate the PDF.

      Warning[] warnings;
      string[] streamids;
      string mimeType;
      string encoding;
      string extension;
 
      byte[] bytes = reportViewer1.LocalReport.Render(
        "PDF", null, out mimeType, out encoding, out extension,
        out streamids, out warnings);
 
      FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"D:\ReportOutput.pdf", FileMode.Create);
      fs.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
      fs.Close();

This code snippet came right from the MSDN Books on Line, and is pretty simple. I could have selected another format by changing the first value passed into the Render method, for example “EXCEL” would have rendered it as a Microsoft Excel document.

In the code samples I placed the above sample in it’s own button, but I could just have easily placed it under one of the other demo buttons.

This ability brings up some interesting possibilities. For example, the report viewer control does not have to be visible to the user in order for this to work. Thus you could create an application that every night generated a series of reports and saved them as PDFs to some central location, such as a web server or document control server. All the user (assuming one was around) would have to see is a progress bar, the reports themselves never get displayed.