An Introduction to the Blockchain technology.
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What’s on our mind?
Exsilio Solutions is proud to introduce our new blog! Not only is this forum completely integrated with all our social networks, but it is also 100% responsive. Now, you can take Exsilio with you on your phone, tablet, and desktop - redefine what you thought possible!
2020 Design Forecast
The design world is constantly changing, expanding, and challenging new horizons. Every year brings in new perspectives and technology that inspires designers to try something fresh (or sometimes, breathe new life into something classic).
What’s the Advantage of Test Automation?
Moving from Manual to Automated Testing. Learn the pros and cons of manual testing and what you stand to gain from switching.
Adobe XD in 2019: How Far They’ve Come and Where They’re Going
As Adobe approaches their second anniversary of launching Adobe XD, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the more recent feature additions to the platform, as well as to share insights into their future roadmap.
Introduction to Machine Learning
Machine learning is an analysis of data to use it to drive answers. Data is derived by detecting statistical patterns and trends.
Robotic Process Automation – Bot Development
Process of automating business operations with the help of bots without human intervention is called Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Employee Spotlight: Dylan Kesselring
Our August Spotlight features one of our Program Managers, Dylan Kesselring! Learn more about his role, hobbies, and most valuable lesson learned at Exsilio.
Power BI Data Gateway
Power bi data gateway is used as a bridge between on premise database and cloud services to have up to date data.
Employee Spotlight: Umesh Prajapati
Our October Spotlight features our IT Director Umesh Prajapati! Learn more about his role, hobbies, and his biggest lesson learned at Exsilio.
Common Data Warehouse Problems and How to Fix Them
Learn about common issues in a data warehouse and the approaches you can use to resolve them.
Benefits of a Cloud-Based Enterprise Data Warehouse
Here's why you should make the move to a Cloud-Based EDW.
How to use Change Data Capture
Here's a step-by-step tutorial on using the Change Data Capture function.
Ready Hacker One: A Hack-a-thon hosted by Exsilio Solutions
The recap of our 1st international hack-a-thon event! See all the highlights of the event from each office here.
Employee Spotlight – Sirisha Pisupati
Learn about one of our PMs, Sirisha Pisupati, including her daily work, lessons she's learned at Exsilio, and why she makes the best Vegetable Briyani!
SSIS Safari Adventure: How to Hack an XPath through the Occasional ETL Jungle
Our guide on how to hack an XPath through the ETL jungle in SSIS.
Employee Spotlight – Hyo Lee
The Spotlight shines on Hyo Lee! Learn about his favorite camping spots, background, and the lessons he has learned at Exsilio.
Loading Data from Azure Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Server via SSIS
How to Load Data from Azure Data Lake Store to Azure SQL Server via SSIS
Creating Restful Web Services with Web Tokens and Azure Active Directory
How to add Restful web services using Web API 2.0 in MS Visual Studio, protect our APIs with Azure Active Directory using OAuth 2.0, OIDC, and JSON web tokens
Employee Spotlight – Ashish Sharma
The Spotlight this quarter falls on our Data Warehouse developer Ashish Sharma! Learn about his daily tasks, hobbies, and dream vacations!
Employee Spotlight – Bhavesh Thakkar
Learn more about one of our senior application developer Bhavesh: his hobbies, his daily work, and his favorite food!
Understanding Query Execution Plans in SQL Server Management Studio
A baseline on how to start using Execution Plans to improve your query performance.
Employee Spotlight – Michael Gilman
Learn more about Data Warehouse Developer Michael Gilman including his daily tasks and what he believes makes a great Exsilio employee.
SQL Server – PIVOT/UNPIVOT Clause
Understanding the benefits of the PIVOT/UNPIVOT Clause in SQL Server.
Exsilio Collaborating for Success
Here's an example of how we put our Exsilio Fundamentals into practice. This week: a puzzle challenge!
SSAS Dimensions and Cube Basics
Explaining SSAS Dimensions and Cube Basics.
Employee Spotlight: Madhuri Pasupuleti
Read a quick interview with one of our Developer Consultants about what she loves about her work and her favorite hobbies!
Handling Requests in an Agile Project
Tips and tricks on handling multiple Agile project requests.
Pros and Cons of Dynamic SQL
The pros and cons of Dynamic SQL and how to use it.
Employee Spotlight – Erin Vyborney
Learn about our corporate recruiter Erin Vyborney's hobbies, day-to-day work, and background!
How to Help an Overwhelmed Stakeholder
Here are some tips on how to calm down an overwhelmed stakeholder.
Improving the Processes for an Expanding Support Team
A few best practices that can improve support processes and help get more insight into how well current processes are performing.
Upgrading a Ticketing System in the Real World: A View from the Trenches
The 6 key solutions to upgrading your ticketing system.
Employee Spotlight: Charles Dahms
Learn more about one of our veteran PMs, Charles Dahms, and his hobbies and daily work.
Setup and Usage of R in SQL Server 2016
How to setup and use R in SQL Server 2016 using the SQL server R Service.
Turning Around a Troubled Project
5 Steps to Turn Around a Troubled Project
Flowchart: How does an Enterprise Data Warehouse Work?
A flowchart to better understand the function of an enterprise data warehouse.
Agile/Scrum or Waterfall: What Methodology Should I Choose?
Here’s a quick primer on how we decide between Agile/Scrum and Waterfall.
Implementing an Enterprise Data Warehouse and Determining its Business Value
Understand the 3 main strategies used when implementing a enterprise data warehouse.
Employee Spotlight – Raviraj Oza
Get to know Raviraj Oza, one of our App Dev consultants in our India office.
Employee Spotlight – Neetu Kaur
Meet our Orange Studios Office Coordinator, Neetu! Learn about her hobbies, day-to-day work, and the two things she can't live without.
Producing Recommendations Without Historical Data by Utilizing Fuzzy Search and TF-IDF
How our team created course recommendations without Historical Data by utilizing Fuzzy Search and TF-IDF.
Employee Spotlight: Josh Dominguez
Back again with another Employee Spotlight with one of our marketing consultants Josh Dominguez.
Employee Spotlight: Mike James
Who is Mike James? Well this Employee Spotlight will answer all your questions about Exsilio's Technical Project Manager.
Employee Spotlight: Eric Ross
Meet Eric Ross, our IT & Operations Manager, and learn about his favorite hobbies, daily activities, and love for hockey.
The Comprehensive Video Walk-Thru of the Azure ML Toolkit
The comprehensive set of video walk-thru tutorials for the Azure ML Toolbox.
3 Google Analytics Sections To Monitor After Launching Your Landing Page
Discover 3 quick Google Analytics sections that can provide insights into your landing page's success.
AGILE Story Point Myths
Do story points always have to serve as a measured unit of time? Well, it depends.
Employee Spotlight: Poornima Deshpande
Learn more about another member of our App Development team, Poornima Deshpande.
2 Google Analytics Segments to Unlock New Data Insights
2 Google Analytics Segments to you can create to unlock new insights in your data.
How to Use Powershell or SSIS to Download a Sharepoint File
Here's how to download and access a Sharepoint file via Powershell or SSIS.
Employee Spotlight: James Burk
Learn more about our Manager of Program Management, James Burk, including his favorite food, experiences, and love of space exploration.
Employee Spotlight: Jeremy Ramos
Employee Spotlight: Senior Application Development Consultant Jeremy Ramos.
New Employee Spotlight: Sirisha Pisupati
Introducing two of our new employees: Vince Marchillo and Sirisha Pisupati
What is Business Intelligence?
Understand the core purpose of Business Intelligence and why it is valuable to an organization.
How to Plan Out Your First BI Project
You've got your first BI project. Now what? Here are 3 key prep phases to keep in mind.
Orange Studios Partners with Hopelink
Orange Studios has a partnered with Hopelink to fundraise for families in need in the Redmond community.
SQL Stored Procedures Best Practices
Understand best practices for SQL Stored Procedures regarding 3 categories: readability, performance, and handling bugs.
Employee Spotlight: Andrew Hill
Triathlons, Mario Kart, and more in October's Employee Spotlight with Andrew Hill.
Snowflake vs Star Schema
How to choose between a Star Schema or Snowflake Schema when your building a data warehouse.
OAuth Essentials: Understanding OAuth Workflow
Understand the essentials of OAuth in a nutshell: What it is, how it works, and how to implement it.
Employee Spotlight- Esayas Huluka
Meet Esayas, one of our rockstar App Developers in Redmond. You can find him tackling tough programming problems, or following his favorite soccer team!
Accuracy, Precision, Recall & F1 Score: Interpretation of Performance Measures
How to evaluate the performance of a model in Azure ML and understanding “Confusion Metrics”
Cruise Time!
Belinda recalls learning she was joining the company cruise her first day on the job.
Employee Spotlight- Matt Erickson
Matt is one of our rockstar designers for the Yeti team. He specializes in crisp design, awesome front end dev, and sniffing out the best BBQ in the OC!
SQL SERVER 2016 – ISJSON Function
In my first post, How to load data into SQL Server using JSON functionality, I discussed one of the key functions of SQL Server 2016 JSON support, which is OPENJSON.
Today we will see another built in function of JSON, which is ISJSON.
ISJSON - This function is used to test whether a string contains valid JSON or not. It returns 1 if the string is valid JSON. If not, it returns 0. It returns null if the expression is null. We will check all of these return values.
SQL Azure Job Agent Using Azure Automation
How to use Azure Automation to schedule executions of stored procedures on your SQL Azure database.
SQL Server 2016 – How to load data into SQL Server using JSON Functionality
SQL 2016 brings in many new features such as Data Masking, Always Encrypted, multiple TempDB database files, Query Store, JSON support, Row Level Security, R, and Stretch Database etc. Today we are going to focus on one of my favorite which is JSON support.
Employee Spotlight: Shawna Proske
Many people ask us, “What is the best part of working at Exsilio?”.. The answer is simple, our people! Every month we spotlight one of our awesome employees. These spotlights will highlight their experiences, accomplishments at Exsilio, and fun facts about what makes them great! This month, we're featuring Shawna!
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Employee Spotlight – Sylvia Cortez
Many people ask us, “What is the best part of working at Exsilio?”.. The answer is simple, our people! Every month we spotlight one of our awesome employees. These spotlights will highlight their experiences, accomplishments at Exsilio, and fun facts about what makes them great! This month, we're featuring Sylvia Cortez! MORE
Switching Tables in a SQL Server Database to a New Filegroup
Sometimes you may find your SQL Server database is performing at suboptimal levels. After a lot of use, especially in a production environment, your database will have endured a high number of transactions, object creation and drops, and these can lead to fragmentation of the data at the disk level. You may also find that your database is quite large, but it has some empty space. However, when you attempt to shrink the database, you cannot do it. In this case, a common culprit is fragmentation.
Setting Up Schema, Roles, and Database Permission for Users
This procedure code should help you out with setting up an environment for your users and save yourself the extra steps of manually creating group, schema, and granting permission.
Employee Spotlight – Jameson Balingit
Many people ask us, “What is the best part of working at Exsilio?”.. The answer is simple, our people! Every month we will be spotlighting one of our awesome employees. These spotlights will highlight their experiences, accomplishments at Exsilio, and fun facts about what makes them great!
Tips for Indoor Photography in Low Light
Our favorite in-house photography nerds breakdown their best practices for tackling low-light in-door photography.
Configuring Environment Variables for an SSIS Package
For all the devs out there - how do you configure the environment variables for an SSIS Package? Our preference is to create package and using parameters and variables to create two separate environments of the same package. In this post, we'll show you how.
Got a Niche?
The most important decision to make before creating an advertising campaign is determining the audience you would like to reach - or finding your niche market.
Analyzing Source-Target Mappings for SQL Stored Procedures
If you want to analyze or create a particular job, Integration Services (SSIS) package, or other form of ETL in Microsoft SQL Server, one of the first things you may want to do is take a look at all the stored procedures you are running and determine which ones need to run before others.
Entrepreneurship in the New Generation
Recently, I had the honor of participating in Startup Weekend GIRLS (#swgirls) at the Lake Washington Girls Middle School. Together with our Marketing Coordinator, Shawna Proske, I acted as a coach; to help the new generation of entrepreneurs to brainstorm, plan, develop, and pitch their new business ideas for the competition.
Business Intelligence: How Much Do I Need?
Many business leaders find themselves asking, “How much Business Intelligence do I need” when faced with the task of determining where they stand in the market, where they can improve, and/or how they can cut costs. Of course, if that business had unlimited resources, then the answer is “give me everything you’ve got”. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have those kind of resources, so the question becomes: how much business intelligence (BI) do I need.
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Email Marketing and Social Media Saturation
Recently, noted writer and public speaker, Tim Ferris announced he would be moving more of his marketing to email from major social channels like Facebook and Twitter. The reason he gave is that today's world is a “battlefield of noise” and that with social media saturation, his blog posts were getting lost in the fray.
4 Behaviors for Project Management Success that you can Implement Today
There are many resources for aspiring or practicing project managers. A cursory internet search turns up a multitude of tools, theories, and certifications. While the inherent rigidity of project management is important, soft skills often play a huge role in determining the outcome of a project. The behaviors outlined below reflect learnings that I’ve accumulated over the years to improve my projects and provide the most amount of value I can to any project owner.
Thanksgiving at Exsilio
Thanksgiving is a time to rejoice and be grateful for all the good that has happened to us over the past year. At Exsilio it is also a time for employees to gather and stuff our faces with delicious food! We get excited every year to show off our cooking (or buying for us non cooks) skills during the Thanksgiving potluck. Both our Redmond and Irvine offices took part in what is quickly becoming a yearly tradition. Employees battled in the morning to get our work done as the aromas of everyone’s dishes filled the air. MORE
Big Data & Marketing
As a business intelligence professional, I am always keeping an eye on developing trends in the industry and recently I came across an article on the "Top 8 Big Data Trends That Marketers Should Care About." Being a part of the Redmond office, I have the opportunity to see our marketing team in action and appreciate the work that they do. This article naturally piqued my interest as I see the team work diligently to help clients develop sound marketing strategies to grow their businesses and streamline their day-to-day business operations. MORE
Javascript Best Practices: Modules
As modern web applications become increasingly client heavy, it’s important to properly organize your client side code. In small applications, organization may not seem necessary, however, as your application grows and more people are involved with the project, proper organization becomes key to keeping the application maintainable. This is where Modules come in.
Starting with LESS CSS and Bootstrap – Part 2
In part 1, I covered a few important things you should know when starting with LESS CSS. This segment will cover Bootstrap. If you don’t have a decent understanding for LESS, I encourage you to spend some time with it because Bootstrap leverages the technology and this article will make much more sense.
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Google Search versus Google Display
Last year, Exsilio’s resident Search Engine Marketing expert Chris Meade released an article making the case for Bing Ads. For this article, we are taking a different approach and focusing on the maximization of the ROI on your ad campaigns by choosing the network that best helps you achieve your end-goal, whether that is more leads for your business, greater awareness of your products and services, or building brand loyalty.
Using Metadata to Simplify Database Administration
When creating a database and an ETL process to either load or extract from it, you can help yourself quite a bit by creating a metadata repository. The benefit of this metadata is that you can use it to create data-driven ETL and other processes: instead of creating numerous lines of code for each particular object, you can create a dynamic process which uses metadata to perform the appropriate ETL for all your objects.
Why Consulting is a Great Career Opportunity
The 3 reasons why consulting is the great career opportunity: Training, Networking, and Experience.
Parallel Optimization in SSIS 2012
Being able to run multiple stored procedures in parallel can provide a major performance boost when loading a data warehouse. In this post, I’ll describe a process which will take full advantage of server resources by running multiple procedures in parallel.
SQL Server Integration Services Fast Load – So Fast and So Clean
The difference between running an SQL Server Integration Services Fast Load and a Stored Procedure.
Facebook Power Editor 101
Advertising on Facebook has become a powerful tool marketers use to create successful campaigns that can reach a worldwide audience. MORE
Software Testing Trends
In the past years, the trending of mobile technology, applications and the cloud has grown exponentially. It continues to grow today. Therefore, the demand for testers is growing as well. Security, performance, and usability testing are on top of their list to have a successful product.
The popularity of mobile technology and apps are insane. Along with it, the demand for mobile testing continue to trend exponentially every year. Based on the study published by Capgemini, Sogeti and HP in 2013 -2014 around global testing trends, there is an average of a 70% increase in mobile testing practices across industries. MORE
Work Around For ShellRunas With Office on Windows 8
At Exsilio we do a lot of consulting work. As a result we often need to use client provided credentials on our Exsilio work stations. This can be difficult if the credentials provided are active directory based, since most of us are running on an internal active directory domain. To get around this we use a cool little Explorer extension called ShellRunas which is part of the Sysinternals Suite (a free collection of useful system utilities for Windows). MORE
Starting with LESS CSS and Bootstrap – Part 1
In the web world, LESS and Bootstrap are major tools in the developer's toolkit. If you haven't heard of them or have not had the chance to use them, I highly recommend it. They will make your web development process extremely easier. But as with anything, there's a learning curve. MORE
Maps aren’t just for directions!
There’s a good chance that you looked at a map recently. Maybe it was the GPS in your car or on your phone. Or it may have been on an app to help you find a place to eat or fuel up at a gas station. Every time you use one of these maps you are utilizing a Geographic Information System. Until about 5 years ago, if someone said ‘GIS’ they were probably talking about ESRI’s ArcMap. Today, the term GIS is more ambiguous and can be applied to a lot of different solutions that involve a map. MORE
Best Practices for Social Media Engagement
With new emerging technology and the internet at our fingertips, Social Media is changing the marketing world today and offering a unique way for marketers to engage customers. Not only does it promote news or updates in real time, it also allows interaction between the organization and their customers via comments, Likes, feedback or sharing. MORE
The Case for Bing Ads
"if you aren’t running campaigns on Bing Ads, you missed 5.6 billion US queries conducted in March, 2014”
A Weekend of Mammoth Proportions
"The weather was perfect and the sun loosened the snow for better riding conditions. We took full advantage of the great weather and magnificent snow available to us." MORE
How is Mary Poppins Changing the Swiss Economy?
In this article I will prove how the opening sequence of Mary Poppins foreshadows both the narrative arch of the film as well as the economic reform which is currently underway in Switzerland.
Gaming Over the Years
Last week, I saw this image floating around the internet.
Turkeys in Advertising
I’ve been obsessed with advertising since I was young. I love everything about how ads are created.
Exsilio Participating in Microsoft Digital Efficiency Program
Exsilio is participating in a new marketing operations initiative from Microsoft, called the Digital Efficiency Program (DEP).
About the Exsilio Culture: Hard Work, Fun Rewards
The Hard Work / Fun Rewards model and why it works at Exsilio.
Boo
For me, Halloween is a holiday that is full of memories, maybe even more so than Christmas or my birthday.
Google’s Keyword Devolution in SEO
Over the last two months, there has been a bit of a panic in the search community (SEOs specifically) around the shocking change in Google's keyword data. Or lack thereof.
Top 10 Places to Meet Up for After Work Beers in Redmond
With the number of people living around and commuting to and from Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington, you might guess there are quite a lot of after work drink meetings happening.
What Does Social Success Look Like
In the world of social media there are as many ways to measure success as there are ways to cook eggs.
What the Tweet?
If a tweet falls in the woods, does it make a sound? You bet it does. Remember when we used to have to actually watch commercials on TV?
Practicing Clichés
You can't just execute an idea that worked for someone else and expect it to perform better for you. This is how best practices get people in trouble; an idea, concept, campaign, etc, turns into a practice, diminishing opportunities for innovation and creativity.
The Monty Hall Paradox
The last Mythbusters* episode I watched tested the Monty Hall Paradox. The last time it was popular in mainstream was on the game show Let's Make a Deal.
The Cool Ranch Tacos and the Side of Beans
How Taco Bell's success with its Dorito Tacos highlights the two methods of branding your company and services.
Four Essential Links for an Introduction to Social Media Community Management
Social media has become the way many companies communicate their brand and messaging to their customers.
Using Social Media Marketing to Fail Better
Sometimes it’s hard to make the case for a big investment in social media marketing. It can be difficult to scale, time-consuming, and there’s always the risk of - gasp! - negative feedback.
Tracking Twitter Engagement: 4 Free Tools to Get Started
A colleague and I were recently tasked with reviving a client's stale Twitter account. The account had several hundred followers, but had not been active in months.
Impression Share: Why Your Paid Search Marketers Need To Know This
Understand the importance of impression share and how to use it optimize your ad campaigns.
Second Screen: Today’s Media Buy Landscape
Ten months ago, I wrote a post about the ‘Second Screen Phenomenon’ and how marketers intend to harness it at the 2012 Superbowl.
Mysterious “File Access Denied” in Windows 8
Often times in the past, I try to delete a file or folder only to be presented with a message kindly reminding me that I can’t delete because it has been locked by another application, So I find the program that has the file open and close it. That’s fine with me because I understand the kernel needs to protect the file to maintain stability.
Surface RT – The Good and the Bad
The Good and the Bad when it comes to the Surface RT.
The Most Efficient Conversion
Conversions are the most sought after end-goal for most online advertisers; it declares that their efforts have worked. These often come at a cost, and require hours of effort and optimization to ensure maximum efficiency.
Which Metrics are Best in SEM?
Which metrics are best in SEM? There are so many numbers and metrics available with online marketing and advertising.
SEO Your LinkedIn Profile
If you love what you do, it doesn’t stop after you leave work. I love search, and I’m always looking to try something new. As such, I turned to my LinkedIn profile.
How to Talk to Strangers
I’ve always felt very comfortable walking up to strangers and starting a conversation. Since I was very little, my CEO father took me to business meetings with him and forced me to walk up to his friends and say hello – most often, I had never met these people before.
Ad Copy – How to Increase Click Through Rate
You’ve done the hard work, you’ve chosen the keywords, dialed in the targeting, and built the landing pages – Google & Bing are ready to serve your ad, and you’re ready for some new customers.
Debugging jQuery plugins
We can probably all agree that jQuery is pretty awesome. It makes writing client side code a piece of cake and there are tons of plugins to do what you need or at least to get you started.
Coming Full Circle
Well, here I am again. I find myself back at Exsilio after a 3 year hiatus to see what else is out there in the professional world of software development. I’m lucky enough to live in Irvine, CA.
Your Brand on Pinterest: Pushing a Different Kind of Content
Although everyone's latest social media darling experienced a slight drop in growth this past March, Pinterest was recently announced as the third most popular social network, behind Facebook and Twitter.
Marketing for the Film Prometheus: You’re Doing it Right
When I first saw the trailer for the new Ridley Scott film, Prometheus, several months ago, I thought it looked like a pretty good sci-fi film, but I wasn’t “over the moon” excited for it.
It’s Kind of Fun to Do the Impossible
Sign Up Now to Receive the Exsilio Quarterly Newsletter: If there is one word I use to describe the people and the work at Exsilio, the first word that comes to my mind is "passion."
The Email Marketing Lifecycle: An Introduction
Email marketing is a quick, cost-effective marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.
Exsilio Out and About
In our latest venture outside the office and the land of code and Expression Studio, we have teamed with the Irvine Chamber of Commerce to bring "Legends and Leaders" to the Orange County business community. In its second year, Legends and Leaders is an extradordinary event showcasing standouts in corporate Orange County.
Predictive Analytics
For decades, retailers having been trying to gather their customer’s interest, habits, and behavior to better understand how they should be targeted.
Exsilio’s Creative Process: From Sketch to Conception
How does our Creative Department tackle a project? Check out this guide on establishing a creative style and approach in Exsilio's creative process.