Playing with SSIS I normally have to read flat files that come in zip format. The standard procedure here is to launch winzip, decompress the file, read it with a flat file adapter and then delete the uncompressed file. This behaviour generates a lot  Read more

Thanks to a comment sent by a reader of my M2M paper , I just found a possible bug (or " not supported by design feature") of the CREATE LOCAL CUBE mdx statement. In short, it seems that a simple many-to-many dimension relationship is supported, but if  Read more

Two sample chapters of my Programming Microsoft LINQ book are finally available. Links to download pages in the chapters title. Chapter 6 - Tools for LINQ to SQL In this chapter, we took a look at the tools that are available to generate LINQ to SQL entities  Read more

A comment received by one reader of Programming LINQ suggested me to underline a concept that is not so intuitive using LINQ, especially if you come from years of SQL coding. The idea is very simple. Two entities in LINQ might be related in the model.  Read more

I worked on Data Mining solutions years before Microsoft added it to Analysis Services. It is an interesting domain for everyone, but it becomes really hard to explain how it works when you scratch the surface. At the last TechEd Developers I watched  Read more

I and Paolo Pialorsi have been interviewed at TechEd by Ken Rosen. We talked about our experience as book authors of Programming LINQ . If you are interested in writing a book, or if you simply want to see our faces and hear our italian accent, you can  Read more

I'm already in Orlando for TechEd 2008 Developers . Tomorrow I and Paolo Pialorsi will be at the TechEd bookshop for a book signing of our just released Programming Microsoft LINQ , scheduled at 4:00PM-4:30PM. I wrote a post a few days a go with the list  Read more

Finally, the Programming Microsoft LINQ book is available . We (I and Paolo Pialorsi, the other author) updated the website that supports our books ( http://programminglinq.com ), where you can download the sample code of the book. What’s in this book?  Read more

I'm still late with blog reading and sometimes I discover interesting things one or two months later than the original posting. I just read the SQLCAT analysis of the several solutions available to handle multiple parent-child hierarchies within a single  Read more

I'll be a speaker at the European PASS Conference 2008 next week in Dusseldorf. I will talk about advanced dimensional modeling using many-to-many relationship. The content is based on " The many-to-many revolution " paper I wrote two years ago. If you  Read more