Sometimes I need to have a huge table to make performance tests and I want to create the table easily. I found a simple way of producing these test data using CTE in a creative way and decided to post it so I can have it at hand when needed and maybe  Read more

In a previous post I showed how to make bulk insert faster using SSIS. During Sql Server Conference 2007 I had the great opportunity to double check it with Stefano Stefani that analyzed the problem in greater detail and finally came up with both an explanation  Read more

In a previous post I spoke about the advantages of having sorted flows in SSIS to greatly speed up data insertion using fastload. The need to have a sorted flow brings some severe problems to the SSIS programmer that he need to be aware of and that IMHO  Read more

I have been so used to use int identity fields as primary key for any table and to believe it’s the fastest way to define a clustered primary key that I never thought this can cause serious performance problems to SSIS. Until I tested it and discovered  Read more

Distinct is a partially blocking component that remove duplicates from one flow. Its main advantages against the sort component provided in SSIS are: Memory usage: Distinct does not cache the whole flow (as Sort does) but retains in memory only the distincts,  Read more

I love VISIO to make database modeling, it gives very nice and colorful diagrams that I use for the documentation. I hate VISIO as it is really far from perfect, among all the others one thing it lacks is the ability to generate a database using SCHEMA  Read more

Yesterday I had to fix a simple still subtle bug in TableDifference , I think sharing the experience will be useful for everybody involved in custom component creation. The component has some fields that are initialized in the component constructor, at  Read more

SqlBulkTool is a command line utility that is used to quickly create a mirror of a database. It reads its configuration from an XML file containing source and destination command strings and a list of all the tables to mirror and then handles the work  Read more

Several people downloaded TableDifference to handle SCD faster, some of them, especially using it on huge table (more than 10 millions rows) noticed memory problems. The problem is that of a flow running too fast and making TableDifference cache data,  Read more

TableDifference has been updated to version 1.1. The major improvement is the fact that now TableDifference can handle a field as Key : a field that represent a key in the table, you must supply KeyOrder Compare : a field that is to be compared between  Read more