Choosing the Right BI Platform

In any business environment the critical mission is staying ahead of your competitors and ahead of the economy, choosing the right business intelligence (BI) platform can give you the competitive advantage you need for success. Taking time up front to evaluate your current environment and to define your goals and objectives are key in identifying a solution that will best fit your organization's needs and ensure long term success.

Can someone give me a Template please?

Can someone give me a Template please?

In this post I’m going to explain how to create a custom template that you can add to your Report Server and it will then appear in the Visual Studio installed templates list when you add a new report to your project.

SSIS variables: DateTime data type has no milliseconds

Everyone who has written more than few SQL queries is well aware of the issues that can occur when dealing with dates and times.  After a while you develop methods for getting around different date formats and eventually feel pretty confident that you are on top of the situation.  It’s always good to be aware that there are lots of places in the development world that can trip you up.

Validation in Stored proc or Code

I believe validating data in a stored proc is better:

-IF you have more than one app looking at that stored proc, the validation is done only once.
-When rules need to be changed, they only changed at one central point.

Data Modelling Made Easy

Challenged with the typical time and resources constraints at an entrepreneurial client where rapid LOB system changes are eminent, modelling their data had to be fast and to the point. In order to focus on the business needs with only pockets of time available with decision makers, we needed a tool that is easy to understand and use but comprehensive enough to build the core data warehouse collaboratively whilst abstracting the technical side, in one step.

What is SDLC?

SDLC is a process followed for a software project, within a software organisation. It consists of a detailed plan describing how to develop, maintain, replace and alter or enhance specific software. The life cycle defines a methodology for improving the quality of software and the overall development process.

Customizing Report Manager Home Page

Customizing Report Manager Home Page 

Reporting Services provides default cascading style sheets (.css) files that define styles for the report toolbar in HTML Viewer and for Report Manager’s homepage. In this post we are going to modify the default styles to change the colours, fonts, and layout of the tool bar or Report Manager.

Simple ASP.NET MVC 4 explanation

This post is mainly to assist developers to understand how ASP.NET MVC 4 works and how it fits together to create one AWESOME solution.

I was sceptic at first about ASP.NET MVC (coming from a drag drop ASP.NET Web Forms background) and thought it was just another way of trying to complicate the life of a developer until I started researching ASP.NET MVC.

This example project does not have any fancy styling, I want to put more focus on the MVC.

Each section contain examples on how to get your MVC project up and running as fast as possible.

The topics covered in this post:

• Starting your project
• Models
• Views
• Controllers
• How ASP.NET MVC makes your life easier

New Virtual Labs for Power BI and SQL Server 2014

I am sure I am not the only one with the dilemma of testing out the new functionality released in the latest versions of the Microsoft SQL Server Stack.

Many times I don`t have the Software handy or I simply don`t have the time/space/willpower to install and configure the toolsets required. 

In comes the Microsoft TechNet Virtual Labs.