Community developer blogs

James Snape

Recent Posts

• Integration Services Design Principals

  Posted: 30 Jun 2009 at 18:23 by James Snape

  Whilst doing some design work today for a customer project I realised there are a set of principals I try and adhere to when creating SQL Server Integration Services packages. The list is no doubt incomplete but this is what I have so far. Minimise IO This is a general data processing principal. Usually disk and, to a lesser extent, network performance determine the overall processing speed. Reducing the amount of IO in a solution will therefore increase performance.

• Plaza Mayor World

  Posted: 23 Jun 2009 at 14:39 by James Snape

  Plaza Mayor World, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 100This is effectively a panorama shot wrapped around to look like a mini planet. I almost have it perfected but one of the things you must do is ensure there are no objects in the top or bottom of frame when you shoot them. The lamp post and tower just managed to fall in the zone when wrapped.

• VSTS and TFS 2010 Video Roundup

  Posted: 10 Jun 2009 at 09:17 by James Snape

  There are a lot of new features coming in the next release of Visual Studio and related products. They are easily discoverable but I thought it would be helpful to bring as many videos and screen casts as I could find into a single list for easy consumption. A word of warning though, I can’t be held responsible for the feelings brought on by the realisation that you can’t use any of this stuff in a supported way right now.

• RJR Consulting Web Site Design

  Posted: 05 Jun 2009 at 18:01 by James Snape

  Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a web site for my cousin. This was a ground up redesign of his company web to replace the old SEO unfriendly Flash site. Normally as the developer I only get someone else's completed design; I just do the implementation but I wanted to see if any of my recent photography and image editing skills were transferrable. The site was first designed in Illustrator/Photoshop with a fair number of round trips to agree the final design.

• I'm not a morning bee

  Posted: 24 May 2009 at 11:28 by James Snape

  I'm not a morning bee, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens - 1/2 sec, f/11, ISO 200I took a couple of macro shots a few weeks ago but all the insect images went in the bin as they were out of focus or blurred. This bee was still in the process of warming up for the day so didn't move about much.

• Talbot Heath Fire

  Posted: 25 Apr 2009 at 09:58 by James Snape

  Talbot Heath Fire, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens - 1/250 sec, f/5.0, ISO 100We had a rather large fire on the heath behind our house last week. It Bournemouth Echo article as it's the second time in a month there was a fire here. Unfortunately there is not much left now which is a shame because it's a rare bird breeding ground.I should have taken my long lens; this shot was about as close as I could get due to a police line around the fire. I don'

• Resources for managing an upgrade of IE6/7 to IE8

  Posted: 21 Apr 2009 at 14:11 by James Snape

  If you are a developer and tasked with making sure the corporate rollout of Internet Explorer 8 goes without issues, you will find the following links of use. The main page of interest to you is the IE Developer Centre where you will find all the information and links collected together. Also: Internet Explorer Compatibility (a page with lots of links to useful app compat stuff) Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 (see IEBlog for more informa

• Using Integration Services to populate a Date Dimension

  Posted: 16 Apr 2009 at 18:52 by James Snape

  Every data warehouse needs a date dimension and at some point it needs to be populated. Most use some sort of a SQL script that loops though the dates and add rows to the destination table but this is pretty slow to execute. You might even try cross joining a year, month and day temporary tables to produce a set based solution but don’t forget to filter out the illegal days. I prefer to fill my date tables by generating the correct stream of values from a SQL Server Integration Services script s

• Physical Data Warehouse Design

  Posted: 07 Apr 2009 at 11:02 by James Snape

  This is the second part in a series of data warehouse presentations I’ve been giving. This one concentrates on the physical design of the underlying SQL Server database, some information on the SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse and finally a one slide guide to tuning the storage engine performance. The tuning slide is only really a first step and I plan a more in depth session some time in the future. Also I apologize, this deck is a little word heavy. I prefer more graphics in a presentation

• Google Street View and Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000

  Posted: 20 Mar 2009 at 13:24 by James Snape

  As a photographer I don’t really agree with this amendment which came into force on the 16th February (bold text mine): A person commits an offence who— elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been— a member of Her Majesty’s forces, a member of any of the intelligence services, or a constable,which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or publishes or communicates any such information. A person guilty

• Dimensional Modeling

  Posted: 17 Mar 2009 at 18:17 by James Snape

  I recently gave a presentation at our community event on Dimensional Modeling. It covers the logical design and user model phase of a data warehouse project. Dimensional Modeling View more presentations from jamessnape.This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

• Analysis Services Essential Reading

  Posted: 24 Feb 2009 at 10:15 by James Snape

  One of the big problems I have with some new customers is the knowledge gap between where they are and where they need to be in order to be successful. Given that people can read much faster than they can receive presented information it makes sense to have a reading list. I’ve blogged previously some Analysis Services resources but new and better content is appearing all the time. In addition to that article here are my current reading recommendations for anyone planning a BI or Analysis Servic

• Nautical Crossroad

  Posted: 15 Feb 2009 at 11:44 by James Snape

  Nautical Crossroad, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 1/60 sec, f/11, ISO 100I've been a bit lazy with photos lately. Some have gone to Flickr but not blogged. I also haven't been taking as many as I would like. I blame the cold weather mainly but also I'm doing about 14+ hrs travel a week at the moment for work and the last thing I want to do in the evening is go out and take photos. Hopefully things will pick up as the weather gets warmer.I'm

• When should you do an incremental extract?

  Posted: 22 Dec 2008 at 18:51 by James Snape

  There are no hard and fast rules but the goal is to reduce the time taken to extract data from a source system and reduce the amount of work you have to do with the extracted data. The numbers quoted here are the ones I use as a starting point but you need to measure to determine the best values. Don't do an incremental extract if: There isn't much data in the source table (less than 100k rows) There is enough change in the source table to require that you read most of it each time (for examp

• Downtown Citi

  Posted: 16 Dec 2008 at 17:56

  Downtown Citi, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 1/2 sec, f/7.1, ISO 400 I haven't posted anything for a while so here is a view from Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. I was over in LA at the end of October for Microsoft's Professional Deve

• Fake Miniature Photography

  Posted: 03 Oct 2008 at 17:12

  Do the twist, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Tamron AF 55-200mm f/4-5.6 Macro lens - 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO 100 Since I can't afford nor make enough use of a dedicated tilt-shift lens I have to fake it but one of the main benefits is you get images that look like miniature models. This

• Stay a while

  Posted: 02 Oct 2008 at 11:20

  Stay a while, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. This is really the tale of three processes. I originally shot this with HDR in mind but when I processed it I came up with: ...which I think looks awful. I almost fell out with HDR at this and took the middle exposure to do a standard "7-point system

• Bournemouth Pier, Plate 3

  Posted: 26 Sep 2008 at 09:58

  Bournemouth Pier, Plate 3, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 5exp (1.6-20sec), f/8, ISO 100 As promised, here is my pick from yesterday's early morning shoot. There seems to be something about HDR that can turn an ordinary picture into somthing magic

• The Watcher, Plate 1

  Posted: 25 Sep 2008 at 09:59

  The Watcher, Plate 1, uploaded to Flickr by James Snape. Canon 400D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens - 10 seconds, f/8, ISO 100 Since Claire got up way before dawn to catch a plane this morning I decided that since I was awake I would go and grab some dawn pictures. I was at the beach about half

• Facebook Malicious Site Security Feature

  Posted: 09 Sep 2008 at 16:38

  I ran across an interesting Facebook feature just now. When clicking on a link in one of the group forums I was presented with this: Nice catch! I suppose they could have just removed the post from the forum though... This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.