Writings

Since I wrote so many blogs and articles in 2010, this year may be a little tough to keep up with 2011. Even with 4 extra months to blog, I don’t think that I will be able to hit 100 this year. However, I will definitely shoot for 75 postings, but will save some of my time for writing a book (or two). J You’ll need to stay tuned for that though!

Presenting

Since my schedule can be pretty chaotic already, I can’t really commit to doing too many more than 6 this year. If my job changes or if somehow projects line up to where I can travel around from city to city and doing presentations, then I will definitely try. However, I do not see that happening in the foreseeable future. I will try to hit up some virtual training though so stay tuned on that front as well. J

Professional Development

Because I am a Business Intelligence consultant, I feel that I should move forward at least in some perspective of the BI Stack. And since I have been a developer and a DBA for over a decade now, I am pretty strong from the DBA perspective. As such, very little time will be spent on TSQL or general SQL Server topics. I am very strong with on Reporting Services with quite a few years under my belt on the installing, configuring, creating and managing all aspects of SSRS. However, if I do write a book this year, I may spend considerable time on research and development. And since I have done quite a bit of ETL work for the past 3 years, I would have to say that I am pretty strong on SSIS. I may spend about 50 hours testing and playing with SSIS during 2011 (outside of current work projects that is J). This brings me to Analysis Services. In my current project I have had opportunities to create partitions (manually) and used SSIS to dynamically generate an XMLA script to create partitions on measure groups. I’ve created a bunch of sample cubes and am getting ready to start a new one for my current client. I’ve created hierarchies and have written calculations. I’ve done quite a few other things with SSAS, but I need more real world scenarios to solidify the knowledge that I've gained. My goal here is to put in 200 hours of additional SSAS testing and training.

All in all, I believe all of the BI products that Microsoft provides for us are pretty simple once you get to using them. Going through examples of pulling Adventure Works into a cube can only get you so far! And we all know that if you learn something, but don't use the knowledge gained, it quickly dissipates.

Writings: 75 + book(s)

Presentations: 6

Professional Development: Focus on SSAS and MDX

I’d love to hear encouragement from all my readers out there. If there is some kind of advice that you may have, please reply. And if you don’t already, please be sure to follow me on twitter at @briankmcdonald. Also note that you can subscribe to an RSS feed of my blogs or find me at any of the below methods.

Brian K. McDonald, MCDBA, MCSD
Business Intelligence Consultant – Pragmatic Works

Email: bmcdonald@pragmaticworks.com

Blogs: SQLBIGeek | SQLServerCentral | BIDN Articles | BIDN Blogs | SQLServerPedia

Twitter: @briankmcdonald

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