Hadi Fadlallah

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Hadi is an SQL Server professional with more than 10 years of experience. His main expertise is in data integration. He's one of the top ETL and SQL Server Integration Services contributors at Stackoverflow.com . Also, he published several article series about Biml, SSIS features, Search engines, Hadoop, and many other technologies.

Besides working with SQL Server, he worked with different data technologies such as NoSQL databases, Hadoop, Apache Spark. He is a MongoDB, Neo4j, and ArangoDB certified professional.

On the academic level, Hadi holds two master's degrees in computer science and business computing. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in data science focusing on Big Data quality assessment techniques.

Hadi really enjoys learning new things everyday and sharing his knowledge. You can reach him on his personal website.

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Latest posts by Hadi Fadlallah (see all)

An overview of SQL Server monitoring tools - December 12, 2023
Different methods for monitoring MongoDB databases - June 14, 2023
Learn SQL: Insert multiple rows commands - March 6, 2023

Manipulating SSAS OLAP cubes using SSIS

February 12, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

There are many operations that we may run while working with OLAP cubes such as cube and partitions processing, executing administrative tasks, performing analysis and more… Three query languages that are used to run these operations: multidimensional expressions (MDX), data mining expressions (DMX) and XML for Analysis (XMLA). We can mainly write and execute these queries in SQL Server Management Studio, but many times we need to implement them within a flow that executes other tasks over other services (database engine, file system…)

SQL Server functions for converting a String to a Date

February 6, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

While working with raw data, you may frequently face date values stored as text. Converting these values to a date data type is very important since dates may be more valuable during analysis. In SQL Server, converting a string to date can be achieved in different approaches.

A SQL join on multiple tables: overview and implementation

January 28, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

SQL join multiple tables is one of the most popular types of statements executed while handling relational databases. As known, there are five types of join operations: Inner, Left, Right, Full and Cross joins.

An overview of the SQL cursor @@FETCH_STATUS function

January 23, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

SQL cursor is one of the most popular database objects. It is used to retrieve data from the result set of an SQL query one row at a time. Even if the cursor is not recommended from a performance perspective, they are still widely used especially when handling a small amount of data.

Yet another bunch of SQL string functions

January 13, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

This article is a supplement to the previously published article, An overview of SQL String Functions . This time, we will describe another bunch of SQL string functions used in SQL Server.

Linking relational databases with OLAP cubes

January 10, 2020 by Hadi Fadlallah

One of the most asked questions is how to link an OLAP cube with a relational database, or in another way how to join the result of an MDX query with a table stored in a relational database.

An overview of SQL String Functions

December 25, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we will try to give a brief overview of the SQL string functions used in SQL Server and we will provide some examples.

An overview of the SQL Server Profiler

December 9, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we will describe SQL Server Profiler and how it can be used. In addition, we will mention the tools that are integrated with it- plans about its deprecation, and what are the alternatives?

SSIS Foreach Loop vs For Loop Container

December 4, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, first, we will briefly describe foreach loops and for loops. Then, we will give an overview of SSIS Foreach Loop Container and For Loop Container. Finally, we will compare these two containers.

SSIS Balanced Data Distributor Overview

November 22, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we will give a brief overview of SSIS Balanced Data Distributor (BDD). In addition, we will give some examples and illustrate alternatives.

An overview of the Data Profiling task in SSIS

November 21, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

The Data Profiling task in SSIS is an important task that can be used to assess the quality of data sources. Unfortunately, this component is not widely used by many business intelligence developers.

SQL OFFSET FETCH Feature: Loading Large Volumes of Data Using Limited Resources with SSIS

November 14, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we illustrate how to use the OFFSET FETCH feature as a solution for loading large volumes of data from a relational database using a machine with limited memory and preventing an out of memory exception. We describe how to load data in batches to avoid placing a large amount of data into memory.

SSIS Flat Files vs Raw Files

October 29, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we will give an overview of using Flat Files and Raw Files in SSIS, then we will illustrate some of the differences between using these two types.

SSIS Script Component Overview

October 29, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

SSIS Script component is a prominent strength of SQL Server Integration Services since it allows developers to implement any complex logic and utilize libraries from the powerful .NET framework or third-parties.

SSIS XML Destination

October 11, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

Until now, Microsoft has not included the XML Destination component in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Many years ago, this component was requested on the Microsoft connect website, but it was closed as “Won’t fix.” For this reason, many workarounds and third-party components were created. In this article, we’ll talk about these components and some of the popular solutions for exporting data to XML using SSIS.

SSIS Connection Managers: OLE DB vs ODBC vs ADO.NET

October 4, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, I will first give an overview of the OLE DB, ODBC, and ADO.NET SSIS connection managers. Then I will try to illustrate the difference between them when trying to connect to SQL Server.

SSIS Data types: Change from the Advanced Editor vs Data Conversion Transformations

October 4, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, I will first give an overview of SSIS data types and data types conversion methods and then I will illustrate the difference between changing the columns data types from the Source Advanced editor and using Data Conversion Transformation.

SSIS Derived Columns with Multiple Expressions vs Multiple Transformations

September 25, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, we will first give an overview of SSIS derived column transformation, then we will run an experiment to check if there is any difference between adding multiple expressions within one derived column transformation and adding a derived column transformation for each expression.

Execute SQL Task in SSIS: Output Parameters vs Result Sets

September 17, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In the previous article, I gave an overview of Execute SQL Task in SSIS and we illustrated some of the differences between writing an expression to evaluate SqlStatementSource property and writing this expression within a variable and change the Execute SQL Task Source Type to variable.

Execute SQL Task in SSIS: SqlStatementSource Expressions vs Variable Source Types

September 9, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, I will give an overview of Execute SQL Task in SSIS and I will try to illustrate some of the differences between writing an expression to evaluate SqlStatementSource property or writing this expression within a variable and change the Execute SQL Task Source Type to a variable.

SSIS OLE DB Destination vs SQL Server Destination

August 30, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, I will give an overview of SSIS OLE DB Destination and SQL Server Destination and I will try to illustrate some of the differences between both destination components based on my personal experience, SSIS official documentation and some other experts experience in this domain.

SSIS Expression Tasks vs Evaluating variables as expressions

August 27, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

In this article, I will first give an introduction about SSIS expressions, then I will describe briefly the Expression Task and how to Evaluate a variable as expression. Then I will do a comparison between these two features to illustrate the similarities and differences between them.

SSIS OLE DB Source: SQL Command vs Table or View

August 22, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

Introduction

SQL Server Integration Services provides a wide variety of features that helps developers to build a robust Extract, Transform, and Load process. After many years contributing to SSIS-related tags on Stackoverflow.com, I can say that many developers have some misunderstandings about SSIS features (SSIS OLE DB Source, SSIS Expressions, SQL Server destination …) especially those which are very similar and have some common usability.

An efficient approach to process a SSAS multidimensional OLAP cube

August 15, 2019 by Hadi Fadlallah

Introduction

While building and deploying an SSAS OLAP cube, there are two processing orders that you can choose from when you create a process operation: