Category: Education

Atlanta Code Camp – Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS)

Thanks to everyone who stuck with me during my Saturday morning presentation at the Atlanta Code Camp. For those who didn’t make it, I had come down with either food poisoning or some sort of virus on Thursday night and was extremely sick on Friday. I had recovered enough Saturday to make the camp, even though my voice was just about gone. I promised to post my materials, so without further delay here they are:

First off, here’s the power point slides, in PDF format: Intro to SSIS Slide Deck

Next, here is the script I used to generate my demo: Intro to SSIS Script. If anyone has issues with the directions, please e-mail me and let me know, this is my first pass at this format and I want to ensure it’s usable for everyone.

Finally, here is the project:

SSIS Test 1_zip

I am feeling a bit better today, slept most of Sunday and while I’ve totally lost my voice my fingers still work so I wanted to get this out here.

Thanks to the folks in Atlanta for a great code camp, and thanks again to everyone who attended my session it was a great crowd.

BizTalk Blogs

As part of today’s BizTalk class our instructor Mark Berry had a list of recommended blogs. For convenience I’ve listed these below, as well as in my Arcane Links section. Enjoy…

BizTalk Resources

Stephen W. Thomas BizTalk Blog
http://geekswithblogs.net/sthomas/Default.aspx

Jon Flanders Blog
http://www.masteringbiztalk.com/blogs/jon/

Charles Young Blog
http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/Default.aspx

Lee Graber Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_core_engine/default.aspx

Scott Colestock’s Trace of Thought
http://www.traceofthought.net/

Richard Seroter’s Architecture Musings
http://seroter.wordpress.com/ (Current Blog)
http://blogs.msdn.com/RichardBPI/ (Previous blog from Microsoft)

Brian Loesgen Blog
http://geekswithblogs.net/bloesgen/Default.aspx

Busy Week

I’m in a training class this week put on by Dunn Training. Our instructor is Mark Berry, and he really knows his stuff. I’ve learned a lot about BizTalk in just one day. Downside though is the days are long, which is going to leave me little time for blogging so if my posts are spotty, that’s why.

I found a really great post by Keith Elder on good communications. It’s one of the better written articles on the subject with clear cut examples. Well worth the read.

Don’t forget Atlanta Code Camp this Saturday, March 29th! Tons of great sessions.

Atlanta Code Camp

I just wanted to let everyone know I will be speaking at the Atlanta Code Camp, on Saturday March 29th 2008. My subject will be Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS). From the preliminary schedule I’ve seen, this looks like an awesome code camp, eight tracks this time! The SQL Server track concentrates a lot on BI (Business Intelligence). Three of the five sessions are on SSIS, so if you are looking to learn more about this subject this is the place to be!

The camp fills up quick, I’m surprised it hasn’t reached it’s limit yet. Just a little over a week away so head over to their site and register now!

The Virtual Meeting

We had an interesting event last week during our BSDA meeting. Doug Turnure from Microsoft was presenting at our BSDA group. I decided to Twitter the high points as Doug went through his presentation on SIlverlight. (I loved Doug’s line about the DLR being the Woodstock of programming languages.) During the event Shawn Wildermuth, The ADO Guy (who should probably take on the new name The Silverlight Guy) tweeted back with some interesting comments and links.

At the same time Doug was also recording the presentation using Camtasia. I’m hopeful the quality will be sufficient to distribute as we were using a new microphone in new surroundings.

My goal is to take as many of the BSDA’s meetings as I can to the virtual community. To record the presentations for later playback, and to provide an interactive experience for those who can’t attend. What about your user group?

Doug Turnure MS Developer Evangelist To Speak at BSDA on Silverlight 2.0

Just thought I’d share some exciting news, Doug Turnure the Microsoft Developer Evangelist for our South East area will be in Birmingham on Thursday, March 13th. He will be at the Birmingham Software Developers Association and will be telling us about Silverlight 2.0 and other cool stuff that was announced at Mix 08 this week. Afterward we’ll be having a geek dinner at Jim and Nicks on Oxmoor.

The BSDA meeting will take place at New Horizons in Homewood, beginning at 6:30 pm. I’d suggest getting there a bit early to get a good seat, then be sure to join us afterward for food and more geekery at Jim and Nicks.

The Arcane Internet

I know, I promised to get you up to speed with SQL Server 2008 after my Virtual PC post yesterday. Sadly a nasty thing called work got in the way, and I’ve had  couple of late nighters. It’s coming, I promise. Meanwhile, a few tidbits from around the web.

If you’re a developer, you’re probably aware that MIX 08 has kicked off in Vegas. Sadly, I ain’t there, and am insanely jealous of everyone who is, but that’s life. That doesn’t mean we can’t join in virtually though. The keynote was broadcast live, it was really cool to be able to watch it as it happened (or as much as I could, as I did have to work and wound up listening more than watching). If you did miss it, you can still catch the recording at http://visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/Day-1-Keynote/ . There were a lot of big announcements, including the release of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 and talk about Silverlight for Mobile apps. In addition all the sessions will be available as videos 24 hours after they are presented, so tomorrow (Thursday) we should start seeing some content.

But Microsoft isn’t the only ones producing Mix video on the web. The folks at CodeBetter.com are using Qik to stream live video to the web. I watched a good interview with Miguel de Icaza earlier, I see another one since I left work. Check them out on their Qik site at http://qik.com/codebetter .

The Mix conference isn’t the only place producing video. Earlier tonight the North Dallas .Net Users Group streamed their meeting over the web. I got to watch a few minutes of it but needed to get back to my late night work. But wow, what a concept, a local user group streaming their sessions live over the net. Kudos to them for doing something cool. If I can get all the bugs worked out, and of course get the presenters consent I may very well stream our next Birmingham Software Developers Association meeting live on the web. No promises yet though, lots to work out.

Finally, you may ask how did I learn of all this wonderful content? Twitter! Boy I have to thank Keith Elder, I’ve picked up a lot of good tips since I started. From now on I’m going to be like Jeff Barnes and do everything The Elder says!

Hey, I guess they’re wrong. With all this great Mix content flowing out on the web, what happens in Vegas DOESN’T stay in Vegas!

The Best Intentions

Well, I set out tonight to do some more studying of PowerShell, my new love in life. Then I intended to create a blog entry, but a Twitter post reminded me of something I’d seen on the Hanselman Forums, and next thing I know I’d sucked up my alloted time over there.

So if you want to see what I’ve been up to tonight, check out the Hanselman Forums at
http://www.hanselman.com/forum/default.aspx

Most of what I posted was in these threads: Productivity Tools, Hanselminute Shows, Off Topic and Philosophy of Software.

I can’t leave without passing along at least one PowerShell related tip: I’ve been listening to the PowerScripting Podcast all week. They’ve had 19 shows so far, I started at 0 and am up to number 8. Very good stuff, lots of links to PowerShell tools and tips. One reason it’s taking me so long is I keep stopping to make notes or check out some link they give.

Avoiding Burnout OR How I learned to stop worrying and love the PowerShell

Most geeks I know tend to be workaholics. We go and go and go on a subject, spending long hours in front of our PC’s until we’ve conquered whatever we’ve been working on. It’s important though to avoid getting burned out. When we’ve exceeded our capacities, we’re depressed, dread looking at things, our productivity goes to near zero and stress wreaks havoc on our health.

For the last two months I’ve been hammering away at SQL Server, getting ready for my presentations at the recent code camp. While I’m not quite at the burn out stage, I recognize it’s just around the corner and decided I needed a break. At the same time I came away from code camp energized and wanting to learn something “techy”. The answer then was obvious, to find some technology that was new to me, and that I could use in conjunction with my SQL Server work, but was not directly SQL Server.

I twittered about going to the bookstore on Sunday, what I was actually looking for was a book on F#. (Yes, I’m an old fogey and still like books as a good platform for learning.) F# seems to fit well with processing sets of data. Sadly the stores lacked any tomes on the subject.

powershellstepbystep I did find, however, a book called “Windows PowerShell Step By Step”. This looked like a great fit for my needs. It’s small, around 220 pages so it’s something I can easily read in a short amount of time. It’s on a subject I was interested in, PowerShell. I believe PowerShell will soon become an integral part of all Server based technologies, and we’ll be able to perform remarkable amounts of maintenance and more with PowerShell.

Over the next few days I’ll give some more resources for PowerShell that I’ve already found, but I can tell you I love PowerShell already. My post for today is not so much about PowerShell but about burnout. When you’ve spent a lot of time hammering away, don’t forget to come up for air every so often. Look around, see what other tools are available for you to learn. You’ll find yourself refreshed, and have new skills to boot!

SQL Server 2005 Full Text Searching at the Huntsville Alabama Code Camp

My third and final presentation for the Alabama Code Camp 6 is “Introduction to SQL Server Full Text Searching”. Here are the materials I’ll be using during the demo.

First, here is a PDF of the PowerPoint slides:

Full Text Search Power Points

Next, most of the demos used SQL statements. This PDF file has all of the SQL plus some associated notes.

Full Text Search Demo Scripts

Finally, I did a WPF project that demonstrated how to call a full text search query from a WPF Windows application. Annoyingly enough WordPress (who hosts my blog) won’t let me upload ZIP files, so I renamed the extension to pdf. After you download the file to your drive, remove the .pdf and put the zip extension back on, then it should expand all the source for you correctly. (Yes, I know, I really need to get a host server for binaries, one of these days I’ll get around to it, but for today…)

Source for WPF Demo

Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services – Huntsville Alabama Code Camp

My second post of the day at Alabama Code Camp 6 in Huntsville is “Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services”.

The slide deck is here: Intro to SSIS Slide Deck

The “cheat sheet” or script I used to do the demo is here: Script for doing the SSIS Demo You can step through it to recreate all of the things I did in the demo today.

Finally here is the finished project. It’s actually zipped, but my current host doesn’t like zip extensions so when you download it change the extension from txt back to ZIP. Finished SSIS Project

The Developer Experience

In case you’re wondering why the slowdown in the blog this week, I’ve been spending all my free time getting ready for Alabama Code Camp 6. My first presentation of the day is “The Developer Experience”. It’s chock full of practical, low cost (or even free!) ways to make your life as a programmer more productive.

As promised in the session, here’s the complete PDF of my slides:  The Developer Experience

Steel City SQL Server Users Group – SQL Server 2005 Full Text Searching

Tonight I’ll be presenting at the Steel City SQL Users Group “Introduction to SQL Server Full Text Searching”. Here are the materials I’ll be using during the demo.

First, here is a PDF of the PowerPoint slides:

Full Text Search Power Points

Next, most of the demos used SQL statements. This PDF file has all of the SQL plus some associated notes.

Full Text Search Demo Scripts

Finally, I did a WPF project that demonstrated how to call a full text search query from a WPF Windows application. Annoyingly enough WordPress (who hosts my blog) won’t let me upload ZIP files, so I renamed the extension to pdf. After you download the file to your drive, remove the .pdf and put the zip extension back on, then it should expand all the source for you correctly. (Yes, I know, I really need to get a host server for binaries, one of these days I’ll get around to it, but for today…)

Source for WPF Demo

Look forward to seeing you at the New Horizons Training center tonight, 6:00 PM!

Huntsville User Group – SQL Server 2005 Full Text Searching

Tonight I’ll be presenting at the Huntsville Users Group “Introduction to SQL Server Full Text Searching”. Here are the materials I’ll be using during the demo.

First, here is a PDF of the PowerPoint slides:

Full Text Search Power Points

Next, most of the demos used SQL statements. This PDF file has all of the SQL plus some associated notes.

Full Text Search Demo Scripts

Finally, I did a WPF project that demonstrated how to call a full text search query from a WPF Windows application. Annoyingly enough WordPress (who hosts my blog) won’t let me upload ZIP files, so I renamed the extension to pdf. After you download the file to your drive, remove the .pdf and put the zip extension back on, then it should expand all the source for you correctly. (Yes, I know, I really need to get a host server for binaries, one of these days I’ll get around to it, but for today…)

Source for WPF Demo

Look forward to seeing you in Huntsville tonight!