Prologika (Teo Lachev's Weblog)

PerformancePoint 2010

Teo Lachev — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:52:00 GMT

PerformancePoint? Is it still around? It is (in SharePoint 2010), and it should peak your interest if you are serious about dashboarding. The planning component is of course gone and I have to admit I never had too much faith in it. When comes to dashboards, Microsoft gives you two implementation options:

Reporting services reports in SharePoint web parts – Pros include low cost because Reporting Services is available with SharePoint Foundation, and no need to learn new skills. On the downside, you need to implement your own global filter web parts assuming that you don't use SharePoint Server.
PerformancePoint – This is tool specifically designed for dashboards and it just got better in SharePoint 2010. However, it requires SharePoint Server 2010 which you need for PowerPivot as well. Unfortunately, this puts you in the $5,000+ upfront investment bucket (Vidas has more to say about SharePoint pricing).

Personally, I was pleasantly surprised when I re-discovered PerformancePoint in SharePoint 2010. Here is a cool little dashboard I put together in a couple of hours after importing the Adventure Works KPIs.

I've been complaining for a while that Microsoft doesn't have a web-based OLAP browser. PerformancePoint reporting capabilities (chart and grid) come pretty close. Below is a grid report bound to the Adventure Works reseller data. It would be really cool if PerformancePoint continues the trend to fill in the gap and adds more Excel-like features, such as filters, slicers, etc.

Yes, we now have the ProClarity remnants in the form of a Silverlight-based decomposition tree (requires Silverlight 3.0 on the client). To get it, I right-clicked a cell on the report and clicked Decomposition Tree. This lets me analyze sales by any dimension.

So, what's the catch except the cost? The ridiculously difficult Kerberos configuration of course if you have a multi-server environment. In our case, just when we thought we conquered the Kerberos beast with SSRS, we've found the PerformancePoint doesn't work. As it turned out, unlike Reporting Services, PerformancePoint requires a constrained delegation and uses the Claims for Token service. So, follow the steps in the Configuring Kerberos Authentication for SSRS 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2010 whitepaper closely.

If you have SharePoint 2010 Server already, PerformancePoint definitely warrants your interest.

Kerberos Woes

Teo Lachev — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:26:26 GMT

[Wikipedia] Cerberus, (pronounced /ˈsɜrb(ə)rəs/);[1] Greek form: Κέρβερος, /ˈkerberos/[2] in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed hound (usually three-headed) which guards the gates of Hades, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping.

I think Microsoft got the name right although the Windows version of Kerberos has more than three heads for sure. Yet another weekend spent in troubleshooting Kerberos. This one has an interesting setup.

SharePoint Server 2010 on a Web Front End (WFE) box.
SharePoint Server 2010 (core install) + SQL Server and Reporting Services 2008 integrated with SharePoint on a second box.
Analysis Services 2008 R2 on a third box.

The customer wanted this setup to minimize the SQL Server licenses. Microsoft recommends installing Reporting Services on the WFE servers but this requires as many SQL Server licenses as the number of the WFE servers, plus probably two more (for SQL Server to host the SharePoint configuration databases and Analysis Services (if it is on a separate box). By contrast, the above setup requires two SQL Server licenses irrespective of the number of the WFE servers.

We hit issue #1 when we tried to deploy from BIDS and we got a login prompt that just won't go away. This was related to the fact that the SQL Server setup configures Reporting Services for NTLM authentication. Since this scenario required Kerberos delegation, we have to change the following setting in the rsreportserver.config file:

</AuthenticationTypes>

</Authentication>

As you can see, we had to disable NTLM and add Negotiate. This helped us to a point where BIDS can deploy reports to the SharePoint site and we can manage data sources and report properties. However, for some reason, after a few minutes the data source and report definitions somehow would get invalidated and trying to access their properties result in HTTP 401 User unauthorized error. Re-deploying the reports and definitions "fix" the definitions for a few minutes and then 401 error again.

More troubleshooting…and we figured out the issue was related to a misconfigured SPN entry for the SSRS service account on the ServicePoint core (database) server by executing setspn -l <SSRS service account>. The results didn't include http/<the account used for SQL Server>. Once we got the Active Directory administrator fix this, the issue went away.

We found the Configuring Kerberos Authentication for SSRS 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2010 whitepaper very useful. It's a must read before venturing into the Kerberos candy land 

Good luck!

Applied PowerPivot Course Available

Teo Lachev — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:59:00 GMT

I am excited to announce that Prologika has added an Applied PowerPivot course to the list of our training offerings in response to the strong interest for self-service BI. The class can be delivered as two-day online class (4 hours each day) or as one full-day onsite class. The cost for the online version is $599. Applied PowerPivot is designed to help students become proficient with PowerPivot and acquire the necessary skills to implement PowerPivot applications, perform data analysis, and share these applications with other users. The full course syllabus is available here. I scheduled the first run for September 21^st. Happy self-service BI!

PowerPivot Implicit Data Conversion

Teo Lachev — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:52:00 GMT

A student noticed an interesting behavior while I was teaching my PowerPivot class last week. He noticed that PowerPivot lets you join a text-based column to a numeric column. As it turns out, PowerPivot does an implicit conversion to text when it discovers that you are attempting to join columns of different data types. However, as a best practice, you should convert numeric columns to a numeric data type, such as Whole Number. This will help PowerPivot minimize storage and improve performance.

Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint

Teo Lachev — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:28:00 GMT

I had the pleasure to read the book Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint by Sivakumar Harinath, Ron Pihlgren, and Denny Guang-Yeu Lee. All of the authors are with the Microsoft Analysis Services team. Together with David Wickert, Denny Lee runs the http://powerpivottwins.com/ blog, which is "dedicated to all things PowerPivot". Siva has written the 2005 and 2008 editions of the Professional SQL Server Analysis Services with MDX. So, the book is straight from the horse's mouth.

I really liked the book. It's easy to follow and includes insightful tips. The book targets business users who are interested in creating self-service BI solutions. IT professionals and BI practitioners who will manage PowerPivot applications will find the book useful as well. Professional Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint incudes tutorials that walks the user through the necessary steps to build a PowerPivot-based solution. These steps include importing the data, enriching the data model, creating calculations, and reports. The code samples use a sample database for the healthcare industry – I guess that's because healthcare is the only industry with a budget for IT applications nowadays, or at least self-service BI apps. Adventure Works is probably waiting for the economy to bounce back.

The authors are quick (page 17) to explain the role of the Corporate BI now that the self-service BI era has dawned on us – something that I was eager to get the official Microsoft opinion about. Their short answer is "not much will change", and that's precisely what I think. IMO, self-service BI is a compromise between corporate BI (best) and reality. Ideally, I don't want business users to do anything but analyze. Why should business users import, relate data, and create calculations that as complexity increases look more bizarre then the equivalent MDX expressions? But we don't live in a perfect world and PowerPivot comes to fill in the void. Here are some scenarios where PowerPivot might be a good fit:

1. You don't have a data mart and Excel spreadsheets rule the reporting world. With some help from IT, business users might be able to get the data in the right format and report from it right in Excel.

2. You do have a data mart but you don't want/don't have the skills to build a cube. But if you've gone that far, why not travel the remaining 20% and have a cool cube that business users trust and love?

3. You have a data mart/cube but not all data is in the data mart/cube or you need to mash up data from various data sources.

4. You suffer from the NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome) and you just want to do things your way despite what IT and BI guys like your humble correspondent tell you.

All of these scenarios require compromises in terms of data quality, security, features, and implementation effort. The problems that we aim to solve with corporate BI are not trivial and there are no shortcuts. I know it and you know it. So, be skeptical when you see an impressive presentation that shows how a self-service BI will take upon the corporate BI, no matter if the tool is PowerPivot, QlickView, Tableau, or something else.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in PowerPivot and self-service BI. The book does a great job explaining the capabilities and limitations of the tool. I couldn't stop reading it!

PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services – a Cool BI Fusion with Confusing Name

Teo Lachev — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:07:00 GMT

Although late to the party, I announce the arrival of a very interesting BI technology - PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services – CTP1. What's interesting is that it leverages several BI technologies to provide great data visualization:

The Microsoft LiveLabs Pivot which was developed by Microsoft Research.
PowerPivot – a Microsoft self-service BI tool.
Analysis Services R2
Reporting Services R2
SharePoint 2010

You should keep a close eye of this combination (or at least the last four) as it will become increasingly important in the Microsoft BI stack. Robert Bruckner has provided details about the new arrival. Christian Petculescu, a Principal Architect on the SSAS team, is the driving force behind it. Other MVPs have spread the news. But Kasper de Jonge made my day! He has written a GREAT blog about it with step by step instructions to create your own PivotViewer solution. His blog also cleared my confusion about the role of Reporting Services in this architecture. So, Reporting Services has not been extended in any way. It's just been used an image generator to produce the Pivot images. A better name for the tool could have been a PivotViewer Add-in for SharePoint.

Interestingly, Microsoft Pivot does it work by counting items in collections. It doesn't support any other aggregation functions. Therefore, PivotViewer is not a replacement for Excel PivotTable. It gives you an additional way to visualize you data.

UPDATE

Amir Netz, the mastermind behind PowerPivot, demonstrated PivotViewer during the second day keynote of the BI conference this year. Forward to 1:21. He also talks about the new features that the next version or PowerPivot (SQL Server 11) will bring in, including KPI support, BIDS development support, etc.

Atlanta BI Group First Meeting Topic Announced

Teo Lachev — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:32:02 GMT

I've just updated the Atlanta BI Group home page to announce the topic for our first meeting on August 23th. Given the great interest surrounding Self-service BI, I'll present "Self-service BI with Microsoft PowerPivot".

Hope you can make our first meeting!

OLAP PivotTable Extensions for Excel 2010

Teo Lachev — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:28:00 GMT

Kudos to Greg Galloway (SQL Server MVP) for upgrading his fantastic OLAP PivotTable Extensions for Excel 2010 add-in (now available in both x32 and x64). This add-in is one of the first third party tools I install on a new machine. Since the Excel team seems to be ignoring customer feedback for improving the Excel BI features, OLAP PivotTable provides what's lacking, including:

Excellent search capabilities with Field List, Dimension Data and attribute options. By contrast, the Excel 2010 search is limited to searching within a hierarchy level only. This is pretty much useless with parent-child hierarchies. If I know what level the member is located, I don't have to search, right?
Getting the MDX query – Excel refuses to expose the actual MDX.
Calculated members – Another feature that business users keep asking about but Excel doesn't budge. The Calculations tab of the add-in lets you create calculated members. It will be great if this is more user-friendly. Ideally, the user should get the same Calculation Member dialog that's included in Reporting Services.
Filtering of attribute members

Yet Another Report Timeout Solved

Teo Lachev — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:14:49 GMT

Every now and then, I run into mysterious report timeouts. This time the client had a farm of two report servers integrated with MOSS with long running reports that would time out after two minutes or so. Normally, you shouldn't have such report monsters but life is not perfect, right? The client did a due diligence and had checked/changed every possible timeout setting, including:

Report Processing Timeout in the Reporting Services Server Defaults settings in SharePoint Central Administration.
The httpRuntime settings on all SharePoint farm servers' web.config files:

<httpRuntime maxRequestLength="51200" executionTimeout="9000" />
The "databaseQueryTimeout" value in the RSReportServer.config file from 120 to 900 (15 minutes).
<Add Key="DatabaseQueryTimeout" Value="900"/>
The connection timeout in IIS for the web site on each MOSS server from 120 to 240 seconds.

Alas, no help. Reports would still time out. After much investigation, we discovered a server timeout setting on the load balancer which was set for 2 minutes. After increased it to 15 minutes, the problem went away. So many timeout settings, so little time…

Want more timeout tips? Check out this blog which I wrote four years ago.

Atlanta.MBI Website

Teo Lachev — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:43:00 GMT

The website for the Atlanta Microsoft Business Intelligence SIG is up and running although it's still work in progress.

http://atlantabi.sqlpass.org

1. Please register.

2. Please fill in the two polls on the first page for the first meeting attendance and topic of interest.

3. You can post suggestions for our first meeting on the Discussions page (Meetings forum) as a reply to my first post there.

4. Please use the General forum in the Discussions for any general questions.

5. Please spread the news and redirect Atlanta BI fans to http://atlantabi.sqlpass.org.

Venue for Atlanta.MBI Found

Teo Lachev — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:08:00 GMT

The great search for a meeting place for the Atlanta BI SIG is over! I am happy to report that I found the perfect place. Matrix Resources graciously offered to host and sponsor our meetings in a training room at their premises at 115 Perimeter Center Place #250, Atlanta, GA, 30346. I visited their location and another location today and I think their place is great. The room is capable of accommodating 50 people and has a projector. The location is nice too since I was looking for place around this area to accommodate the traffic concerns of as many people as possible. I personally live in Norcross and it would have been nice to take advantage of the Data Profit's meetup offer but it would have been too selfish J

I also booked the meeting days for the rest of the year. I suggest we meet up every last Monday of the month from 6:30 – 8:30 PM as follows:

8.23, 9.27, 10.25, 11.22 and 12.27

Our first meeting will on be August 23th at 6:30 PM.

My focus now is to put together the Atlanta BI website that will be hosted on sqlpass.org. I'll let you know when it's ready so you could register and stay on top of the latest announcements. Stay tuned!

Venue for Atlanta.MBI Wanted

Teo Lachev — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:19:00 GMT

To follow up on my recent blog about forming an Atlanta-based Microsoft Business Intelligence Special Interest Group, I am planning to have our first meeting in August. The effort now is to find a venue where we can meet. If you have a confirmed location, please post its address to the discussion thread. I'll compile a list and I update this blog and the discussion thread.

Interactive Sorting and Matrix

Teo Lachev — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:31:00 GMT

A customer requested the ability to interactively sort a matrix on rows and columns. When they click the sort indicator in a row, the matrix should sort columns based on that row. For example, if the first rows is clicked and we are in an descending sort mode, the following screenshot shows the desired behavior.

When they click on a column sort, all row groups would sort within the column clicked. Sounds simple? I'll be quick to point out that interactive sort is currently not supported directly inside a matrix with dynamic row groups and column groups. The only supported scenario for interactive sort with matrix is a sort indicator in the matrix corner which sorts based on overall column aggregates when a dynamic row group is present. That case is supported because the interactive sort doesn't reach across from the column to the row axis of the matrix; it just sorts column groups relative to each other based on the overall aggregate of an entire column group instance. Robert Bruckner explains this in the discussion forum and provided a sample report.

So, column sort is out of the question unless you get really innovative and post back to the report by following the approach I presented in my Remembering Report Parameters blog and change the actual query once you know the row and column coordinates. As far as sorting on rows, I got this working somewhat by making the following changes.

I set the Choose What To Sort option to the name of the column group, Sort By to the data field (measure), and Apply This Sorting to the name of the dataset. I said this works "somewhat" because a subsequent sort on another row doesn't work. The user must refresh the report to go back to unsorted state before they click on another row.

It will be nice if tablix tells you upfront that this isn't supported so folks don't trash time thinking that they didn't get the options right.

Atlanta Microsoft Business Intelligence Special Interest Group (SIG) Forming

Teo Lachev — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:03:48 GMT

To Atlanta Business Intelligence fans:

Some of you have approach Geoff Hiten and me about forming an Atlanta-based Microsoft Business Intelligence group. After an intense internal discussion and brainstorming involving SQL Pass, Atlanta.MDF, and the local Microsoft office, we agreed that we should form such a group as a special interest group (SIG) within Atlanta.MDF. I volunteered to lead the group. I started a discussion on the Atlanta.MDF discussion list to solicit feedback and gauge interest about this endeavor. What should we do so you can get the most from this group? Please share your opinion by posting to the thread!

Attend One BI Training Class - Get One Consulting Hour Free!

Teo Lachev — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:45:00 GMT

I am back from vacation in Florida and I am all rested despite the intensive sun exposure and the appearance of some tar from the oil spill. I have scheduled the next two runs of my online training classes:

Applied Reporting Services 2008 Online Training Class
Date: June 28 - June 30, 2010
Time: Noon - 4:30 pm EDT; 9 am - 1:30 pm PDT

Applied Analysis Services 2008 Online Training Class
Date: July 7 - July 9, 2010
Time: Noon - 4:30 pm EDT; 9 am - 1:30 pm PDT

Yes, I am also tossing in an hour of consulting with me to spend it any way you want absolutely FREE! This is your chance to pick up my brain about this nasty requirement your boss wants you to implement. So, sign up while the offer lasts. Don't forget that you can request custom dates if you enroll several people from your company.