Work, work, work, ...

Apologies for the fact there's been no "content" here for a while.  I have a few articles half-done, but haven't been able to polish them off yet - one on inserting rows and retrieving the identity of the inserted rows, and and about how to build 2005 and 2008 components for side-by-side usage (as for Issue #2389 on the Kimball SCD component over at CodePlex).  I am also planning a series on "converting" Script Tasks and Components to Custom Tasks and Components - so that you can reuse them easily.

I'm currently not able to spend much time on SSIS, coding or designing - at least nowhere near what I'd like.  I've finally gotten tapped to help with some COBOL work, which will hopefully (but not realistically) pass by quickly.  On top of the morass of Access "applications" I have to maintain constantly, I don't seem to have much time left over anymore.  And that's a shame - there's a lot of cool things I want to put into v1.5 of the Kimball SCD component.  Version 1.4 is being received very well - and that just makes me feel good, plain and simple.

And many thanks to Scott Stauffer, president of the Vancouver BI PASS chapter.  After I presented there (in a pinch), Scott gave up his spot at Jean-Rene's DevTeach/SQLTeach event in Vancouver to me!  It will be a cool experience, I have no doubt.  I had been eyeing that conference as a "cheap" way to get some more training since it's real close to home - but even with that I didn't think I'd have been able to sneak it by my boss.  Now I have a great excuse to go pester some of the awesome presenters that will be there (specifically Jessica Moss, Joe Webb, Kevin Kline, ...)  I'll be doing an Intro to SSIS session which will be very similar to my PASS presentation - but altered a little bit to address the time problem I had.  I'm hoping to get another session in on a more advanced SSIS topic - but no word on that yet.  Here's hoping I do a decent job and get invited to other conferences.

I've also installed Windows 7 RC x64, braving the waters for my primary machine.  Everything has worked GREAT for the last week, lending some proof to the validity of Microsoft dogfooding it to their own devs for the past year or so.  It's snappy - but doesn't tweak itself for my SSD out-of-the-box as I've seen claimed.  Perhaps it doesn't recognize my drive as an SSD, or perhaps the claims are false... but a few service and registry changes shine it up nicely.

I'll have some "real" posts up soon...