Neal Waterstreet

Goals for 2012

nwaterstreet — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:50:23 +0000

I usually do not write meme-related blog posts, but the New Year’s Resolution is an exception!

PowerPivot: I want to try to focus on PowerPivot and DAX this year.
PASS Healthcare VC: We’ve made some big strides in 2011 – we got it started! There is much more that can be done and we have some good ideas moving forward.
Certification: I would like to pass the 2008 (or really the 2012) BI certification tests. There is a lot of debate on the value of certifications, and even though I am not 100% certain where I stand I think it is better to have them than not. I’ve learned a lot studying for previous exams.
Blog more and become more active on Twitter: This is a goal every year and I never seem to have time. I’m going to make more of an effort this year. I’ll try for 2 posts per month.
Present at the local PASS chapter: I have not presented in a few years. I really enjoyed doing it, even though still I have a lot to learn. It is time to get back into it. I am going to target the second half of the year for this.

SSIS Frameworks Magic presentation

nwaterstreet — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:00:17 +0000

Today I attended Andy Leonard‘s presentation for his SSIS Framework. He has obviously put a lot of effort into this project. It is very robust, and has enough flexibility to do just about anything you want. He has posted the sample code and I am going to take a more in depth look.

The meeting itself was hosted on MeetingBurner, which looks like a new meeting/webinar service. MeetingBurner looks like a nice new tool to try out.

Andy sent out a follow up email that he will be presenting again on 12/27/11 at 10am ET. The link is: http://AndyLeonard.enterthemeeting.com/m/4DEJZZ1K. Check it out if you get the chance!

PASS Healthcare December meeting

nwaterstreet — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:52:33 +0000

Topic: Payer Data Warehouse Modeling 101
Speaker: Jessica M. Moss
Date/Time: December 15, 2011 1:00PM Eastern Standard Time

Attendee Link: www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join

Topic Synopsis: If you are in the healthcare industry, using acronyms such as ICD10 and HCPCS is second nature; however, adding a data warehouse to the mix may take you out of your comfort zone. Not to worry, this session will take that healthcare knowledge and turn it into a lean, mean, fact-finding machine. Learn how to create a payer data warehouse model, created from experience with numerous insurer organizations. If you are not in the healthcare industry, learn about data warehouse modeling best practices, and maybe you will even understand your insurance company better!

PASS Healthcare Virtual Chapter!

nwaterstreet — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:42:12 +0000

The PASS Healthcare Virtual Chapter has it’s first meeting on 11/17 at 1pm EST.

The topic will be “SQL Server in Healthcare – Healthy relationship?” by Scott Shaw. Go to http://healthcare.sqlpass.org for more information on upcoming topics and be sure to follow @HealthcareSQLVC on Twitter.

This is something that I’ve been working on over the last several months and it is great to see it taking off!

Try the statement later.

nwaterstreet — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:30:05 +0000

I got an error message I’d never seen before while altering a database.

Database is in transition. Try the statement later. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 952)

Try the statement later? What does that mean?

I altered a column in a test database and immediately tried to take it offline. That is when I got the error. After searching for the message I found this:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqlgetstarted/thread/e779230a-87bc-4cee-b223-98a029097dc1

One of the solutions was to search sys.dm_exec_requests for an alter process on that database. Sure enough it was suspended. I killed the SPID and the database was back online pretty quickly.