Great for testing results across environments (DEV-TEST-UAT-QA-PROD). Thanks, Steve.

Are you asking for:

1. Business Metadata (What does the data in this table/column mean in business terms) or

2. Technical Metadata (data length, data type, etc) or

3....

Koen, have you also considered:

1. Creating a mini-dimension for low cardinality customer attributes? Kimball calls it a "minidimension" (with customers sometimes referred to as a behavioral minidimension), and that minidimension...

Moral of the story: TEST! TEST! TEST!

+1

If one of the columns you select is a clustered index key, then it could...

I would add that an ODS is:

1. Created as a "near copy" of the transaction system(s).

2. In existence to avoid stressing the transaction system with analytic queries for which...

For one client, I did this:

http://www.kimballgroup.com/2010/09/01/design-tip-127-creating-and-managing-mini-dimensions/

Some "outer part of the box ideas" considering some of your design constraints.

Option 1: IsBillable bit column in Fact table (good solution with column store index).

...

What does your current data model look like (as in a visual, if available).

There are many solutions that come to mind, but I like to compare "what are...

Koen Verbeeck (12/9/2013)

---

Nice article.

One remark though: using SSIS doesn't necessarily mean RBAR.

You can stream the data into a bulk load just fine (as fast as the join) and still find...

Completely agree. Most of the time SSIS is working "Buffer by Buffer" and NOT RBAR. Moreover, while I cannot speak for Jeff, the anti-RBAR master 🙂 , RBAR ceases...

I forget. Is there a limit on the size of a WSTR variable....something like 4,000 characters. If someone's email message exceeded that number of characters, that could be...

Thought the conversion needed to be Unicode, but I could be wrong...

I think it is time for some DAX/DMX questions and questions on tuning the SSAS tabular model. :w00t: Thanks, Steve.

Steve Neumersky, CBIP, MCITP

Don't feel too bad. I gave lots of folks a headache by leaving the word "NOT" out of a question one time.