Sid Atkinson

Sid is a business intelligence (BI) and SQL Server specialist at Catapult Systems, and blogs about Microsoft-related topics including BI.
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Apr23

Decoding IBM DB2

I'd almost mark this to a new category titled: "Trivia". At least, that's what it feels like – particularly when it came to finding out how to do this. Scenario: Client has a financial package running on an AS/400, IBM OS v5 r4, which has DB2 for the iSeries installed. We are building a lightweight application to do some gap filling on this package so some basic reporting can be d...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Thursday, 23 Apr 2009 02:10.
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Apr22

Web Training: The SQL Channel

  One nice resource for training, and recently discovered in my case, is JumpstartTV, a division of Fourdeuce, Inc, which in turn is owned by End To End Training, a provider of technical training. Fourdeuce has some recognizable owners in the SQL Server world: Andy Warren, Brian Knight and Steve Jones (if you don't know them, their blogs are behind the links on their names, get to know them, t...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Wednesday, 22 Apr 2009 02:09.
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Apr21

Central Texas BI User Group now on LinkedIn

Join the Central Texas BI User Group on LinkedIn group to get announcements, start a discussion, share an article, etc. Here is the URL for the group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1912918.  ...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Tuesday, 21 Apr 2009 02:09.
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Apr21

TPC Benchmark Status – April 2009

  For anyone unfamiliar with the TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council), they are an independent non-profit with the goal of creating benchmarks for database systems that are verifiable and reportable to the industry. It is worth taking a look at their site and some of the research; if nothing else, you may get some ideas on reference hardware for your next implementation or use th...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Tuesday, 21 Apr 2009 02:07.
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Apr17

Announcing the Austin Area BI User Group!

  Catapult Systems will be working with Microsoft to sponsor the first Central Texas Business Intelligence User Group. The Central Texas BI User Group's objectives are to: Build community around BI and related technologies Cross-pollinate information and ideas on BI Provide a forum for companies to share innovative programs and solutions based on and related to BI Dates: Wednes...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Friday, 17 Apr 2009 02:07.
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Apr10

2009 Microsoft BI Conference Cancelled

Unfortunately, Microsoft has cancelled this year's BI conference in Seattle, WA. More on the reasons at the official Microsoft BI Blog. Microsoft will cover BI technology and features at other conferences this year such as TechEd, the World Wide Partner conference, the SharePoint conference and SQL Server PASS. Currently, the Microsoft BI conference will be a biannual event, making the next...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Friday, 10 Apr 2009 02:06.
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Apr10

CodePlex project for Data Profiling

  I made a post over a week ago talking about extending the Data Profiling task and in there I just cover the some of the basics on my methods for extending it and what goals I had in mind. It actually sparked a few e-mails and so, due to interest, I am going to graduate my sloppy proof-of-concept code into a workable project. To put further rigor and transparency, I am going to put this pro...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Friday, 10 Apr 2009 02:05.
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Apr6

PerformancePoint Monitoring breaks WSS?!

  Before anyone jumps off a bridge, it is not as bad as the headline sounds; stay calm, step down from the ledge and we can work this out. Background: I got tired of running PerformancePoint in a VPC all of the time and I decided it was time to install it locally. I am running Server 2008 after all with a full blown install of SQL 2008, so I figured adding SharePoint and PerformancePoint wou...
Posted by Sidney Atkinson on Monday, 6 Apr 2009 02:04.
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