Steve Simon

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Steve Simon is a SQL Server MVP and a senior BI Development Engineer with Atrion Networking. He has been involved with database design and analysis for over 29 years.

Steve has presented papers at 8 PASS Summits and one at PASS Europe 2009 and 2010. He has recently presented a Master Data Services presentation at the PASS Amsterdam Rally.

Steve has presented 5 papers at the Information Builders' Summits. He is a PASS regional mentor.

View all posts by Steve Simon

Monitoring SQL Server Reporting Services

February 19, 2015 by Steve Simon

Introduction

In our last get together I mentioned that oft times SQL Server reports are created due to a dire business need to be used once and never again. Further, some reports that we believe are not often used could be “top of the pops” unbeknown to us. A guess as to a number of times a report is used per month, in addition to the statistics behind each report should not be guesswork, but rather monitored actively to ensure that frequently used reports are both efficient and effective. Further, those reports that are either not used or have not been run in quite some time, should perhaps be removed in order to keep the server clean and not cluttered.

Creating dynamically generated CSV files containing SQL Server data

February 12, 2015 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A few months back, I presented a paper at SQL Saturday 327 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Late last month I received an email from one of the attendees. His issue was quite interesting and I decided to share it with you. The gentleman wanted a SSIS script that would permit him to extract data from a SQL Server database table and place it in a CSV file with a dynamically allocated name. Being a strong advocate of using the SSIS toolbox, I experimented with an alternative solution. We are going to construct THIS SOLUTION in today’s get together.

Let’s get started.

SQL Server Reporting Services Best Practices

February 11, 2015 by Steve Simon

Introduction

In past chats, we have had a look at a myriad of different business intelligence techniques that one can utilize to turn data into information. In today’s “get together” we are going to try to pull all these techniques together, rationalize our development plans, and moreover, look at some good habits to adopt or for the want of better words utilize SQL Server Reporting Services Best Practices.

Getting started with data mining in SQL Server

January 19, 2015 by Steve Simon

Introduction

In past chats, we have had a look at a myriad of different Business Intelligence techniques that one can utilize to turn data into information. In today’s get together we are going to have a look at a technique dear to my heart and often overlooked. We are going to be looking at data mining with SQL Server, from soup to nuts.

How to utilize DAX queries against a Tabular Database

January 12, 2015 by Steve Simon

In an earlier “get together”, we had a quick look at the DAX language and how to construct useful queries. In today’s conversation we shall be concentrating on utilizing the knowledge that we obtained from the earlier article and seeing how these queries may be utilized for “multiple value” query selection criteria (against a tabular database).
Enough said, let us get started!

SQL Server security mechanism – How to control what data are users able to view within their reports

January 8, 2015 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A few years back, a client asked me to implement a quick and dirty “security mechanism” to control what data the myriad of users were able to view within their reports. There were numerous tables with multiple columns and all departments (within the enterprise) had their data within these tables.

SQLShack Industries has tasked us with creating a similar quick and dirty “security mechanism”. We shall attack this challenge by creating the necessary stored procedures (to extract the required data) and then utilize these stored procedures to render and consume the data within our reports.

Create reports like a champion! Tips and tricks with Reporting Services

December 24, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

Over the past few months we have covered a lot of ground in our little “get togethers”. We have seen a few of my favorite tips and tricks. In today’s discussion we are going to have a look at a few gotcha’s upon which I have banged my head many times.

Getting started with Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) in SQL Server

December 22, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

In our SQLShack discussions over the past few weeks, we have dealt with a few of the more conventional SQL Server data manipulation techniques. Today we are going to be a bit more avant-garde and touch upon a subject dear to my heart.

With Power Bi becoming more and more important on the business side within major industries worldwide, it is not surprising that sooner or later every SQL programmer is going to have to learn and be able to ‘talk’ DAX.

In this article we are going to have a look at the a few of the more important ‘constructs’ and produce production grade queries for data extraction and for reports; enabling the reader to ‘hit the ground running’.

SQL Server 2014 Data Access Layers

December 17, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

As a person who has always enjoyed finding new and innovative ways to perform tasks more efficiently and effectively with SQL Server, I have endeavored to document some of the more ‘innovative’ ways and means of doing these things in our SQLShack ‘get-togethers’.

Today, we shall be looking at one of my favourites, the ‘Data Access Layer’, not to be confused with ‘Data Access Layers’ from the Visual Studio world.

Automatically load data into a SQL Server database by utilizing the Visual Studio Project

December 12, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A few months back, I encountered an interesting challenge at a client site. For those of you whom have read my previous article entitled “Excel in loading multiple workbooks into SQL Server“, you will know that the challenge centered around loading the data from multiple spreadsheets into our SQLShack financial database.

Now, one of the enterprises business rules was that the loading of this data was NOT to occur before that last of the daily spreadsheets arrived in the common data repository.

How to reduce the report complexity using the “Visibility” options in SQL Server Data Tools

December 11, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

Far too often we encounter clients that are really too keen to establish all inclusive reports for decision making purposes. While this is super (in principle) oft times these folks will inform you that all the data that is within the tables should be present within the report, and this is not always feasible nor practical.

After much thought I came up with an alternative to permit these folks to have their ‘cake and eat it’ and yet not render a cluttered report.

Excel in loading multiple workbooks into SQL Server

December 8, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A year or so ago, I was working on a project that revolved around daily data loads (from various asset management groups within an enterprise) into the main SQL Server data repository. Each group completed and published its own daily figures within their own Excel Work Books. These Excel workbooks were then placed in a common directory and then loaded into the Corporate SQL Server database. Let us have a look at how this may be achieved. In short, we are going to create one package that will process all the spreadsheets within the given directory. Read more »

How to design a map-based report using Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM) and Excel

November 27, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

One of a database designers’ worst nightmares is having to design a database for business analysts and data stewards whom insist upon creating their own reports, using Excel as a GUI. The reason that I mention this is that user created reports often open up “Pandora’s box”; with many of these folks creating their own ‘miss-information’ due to a lack of understanding of the underlying data. A few weeks back I had the ’fortune’ of working on such a project, which prompted an ‘ah-ha’ moment. I decided to design the backend SQL Server database using the Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM) and to employ the super set of tools provided by Microsoft Power BI, with Excel as a GUI. The end results were wildly accepted by the user community and once you see how easy this is to apply, you will be ‘chomping on the bit’ to employ the same techniques on your own user driven projects.

How to enhance your reports with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

November 18, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A few months ago, I was working on a few SQL Server reports for a client. The one request that I had received (from this client) was to ensure that the finished reports were as ‘all encompassing’ as possible, as they wanted to conduct a considerable amount of Business Analytics, via the reports.

Knowing this, I decided (where possible) to attempt to construct the reports so as to enable the firm to do their ‘what if’ scenarios with a minimal amount of time and effort.

The screen shot below is a sample of the final report AND we are going to look at the steps necessary to create this report. Stay with me!!!

Share your data!… Loading SQL data from SharePoint

November 12, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

In the process of doing the round of PASS SQL Saturday’s, I have often been asked how to load data into SQL Server from SharePoint. Naturally and at first glance it should be a ‘no brainer’ however the gotcha is normally related to a security issue. Over the past few days, I have been working on just such an issue. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself!

How to clean data using Data Quality Services and SQL Server Integration Services

October 29, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A year or so ago, I worked for an online web grocery software house located in the northern United States. At that time I had my ‘baptismal’ exposure to ‘genuinely dirty data’. Granted most of the data entry was done manually and many times from offshore. The point being that I could not fathom just how many ways there were to spell the brand name of a major cereal manufacturer. Why is this such an issue? The answer is fairly straight forward. Imagine the scenario that you are trying to ascertain the dollar value of breakfast cereals sold in the country from the local supermarket standpoint all the way up to national sales. Imagine this utilizing a SQL Server Multi-dimensional cube. The ‘eagle – eyed’ reader will recognize that the results will not aggregate correctly should our aggregation attributes have a plethora of different ways of being spelt. Read more »

Quick and dirty server monitoring with SQL Server Reporting Services

October 8, 2014 by Steve Simon

Introduction

A few month back, I found myself in a position where the client wanted a ‘monitoring tool’ to utilize on a daily basis to ascertain the status of SQL Server Systems and to continually monitor disk space capacity. Being a typical Monday morning quarter back and utilizing my favorite SQL Server Tool, SQL Server Reporting Services, I came up with the following ‘ah-ha’ solution. Read more »