The SQLBI Methodology defines architecture and implementation of advanced BI solutions using Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services and – more generally – the Microsoft suite for Business Intelligence.

The SQLBI Methodology is a work in progress and we plan to publish a set of papers describing it within the end of 2008. These papers are draft and we look to get feedback from the community.

Download the papers and give us your feedback in the SQLBI Methodology forum.

Both TableDifference and FlowSync have been ported to SQL 2008. Apart from some updates in the version of the libraries, I had to make some changes in the way TableDifference communicate with SSIS to detect the end of the processing (have a look at this post.

Download the code and take a ride on it, if you find something not working please contact me in the forum area, I'll be glad to help you.

Guys,

The new version 2.0 of TableDifference is finished and available in the download area.

The zip file contains both the DLL and complete sources. Moreover, in the sources folder there is a README.DOCX document that explains how to use the new features of the component, so I will not discuss them here.

Main features are:

• User interfaces completely rewritten and made much more user-friendly
• Ability to disable output flows and/or single columns in the outputs
• Ability to ignore case in string comparisons
• Some speed improvement (haven't tested it carefully but it seems faster. :))

Have a good download and don't be afraid to ask if something is going wrong.

Alberto

Guys, the next version of TableDifference is on the way, please check the call for beta test to participate to the beta test phase of the deploy.

Moreover, if somebody has an install script for SSIS data flow components and would like to share his experience with me to provide an installer... I'll be glad to get in touch with him/her, TableDifference definitely lacks an install program and I do not have much time to write it from scratch.

TableDifference has been updated to version 1.2.

The changes are:

• Several checks with metadata, now the component will raise a warning whenever columns with the same name but incompatible types are checked.
• Sort check and usage: if the flows are sorted then TableDifference will detect it and define all the keys based on the sort position. Moreover the output flows are declared as sorted by all the keys
• Problems with OutputID = 0. Whenever an output with ID = 0 was created TableDifference behaved strangely. This has been corrected, now TableDifference will refuse to save a component with any updateID equals to zero
• Added an icon to detect the component using BIDS
• Graceful metadata integration: when the upcoming metadata was changed TableDifference did not detect it correctly, now it better integrates with BIDS in order to update itself when metadata from the upcoming flows is changed

Any comments are as usual welcome, the installation procedure is always the same as documented in the main article about TableDifference.