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Interactive Sorting and Matrix
June 20, 2010 / No Comments »
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...
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Atlanta Microsoft Business Intelligence Special Interest Group (SIG) Forming
June 14, 2010 / No Comments »
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!
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Attend One BI Training Class – Get One Consulting Hour Free!
June 7, 2010 / No Comments »
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...
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In Search of Aggregations
May 22, 2010 / No Comments »
The other day I decided to spend some time and educate myself better on the subject of aggregations. Much to my surprise, no matter how hard I tried hitting different aggregations in the Internet Sales measure group of the Adventure Works cube, when I got the Get Data From Aggregation event in the SQL Profiler, it always indicated an Aggregation 1 hit. Aggregation 1 100,111111111111111111111 I found this strange given that all partitions in the Internet Sales measure group share the same aggregation design which has 57 aggregations in the SQL Server R2 version of Adventure Works. And I couldn't relate the Aggregation 1 aggregation any of the Internet Sales aggregations. BTW, the aggregation number reported by the profiler is a hex number, so Aggregation 16 is actually Aggregation 22 in the Advanced View of the Aggregations tab in Cube Designer. With some help from Chris Webb and Darren Gosbell,...
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To Partition or Not – This is the Question
May 21, 2010 / No Comments »
As Analysis Services users undoubtedly know, partitioning and aggregations are the two core tenants of a good Analysis Services data design. Or, at least they have been since its first release. The thing though is that a lot of things have changed since then. Disks and memory got faster and cheaper, and Analysis Services have been getting faster and more intelligent with each new release. You should catch up with these trends, of course, and re-think some old myths, the most prevalent being that you must partition and add aggregations to every cube so you can get faster queries. In theory, partitioning reduces the data slice the storage engine needs to cover and the smaller the data slice, the less time the SE will spent reading data. But there is a great deal of confusion about partitioning through the BI land. Folks don't know when to partition and how to...
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Fixing Indicator Images
May 21, 2010 / No Comments »
Indicators, a new feature of Reporting Services 2008 R2, let you show images for state values on your reports and avoid using custom images and expressions. Sean Boon's recent blog shows you how to scale the indicator images. One annoying issue business users reported when working with indicators is that the indicator image stretches if the text grows and spills to the next row. For example, on the report below the second row spans two lines and its indicator images are stretched vertically. Unfortunately, the indicator region doesn't have a property to "fix" the image size. The only workaround for now is to enclose the entire indicator region in a rectangle: a kludgy hack especially for business users.
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Upgrading To Report Viewer 2010
May 16, 2010 / No Comments »
Visual Studio 2010 ships with updated ReportViewer controls which Brian Hartman discusses in his blog. One issue I recently run into with the Visual Studio 2008 ReportViewer ASP.NET control with a chart configured for a dynamic height (DynamicHeight property) where the chart image wouldn't size properly. I found that the issue got fixed in the Visual Studio 2010 ReportViewer. However, in my case we weren't ready to move to Visual Studio 2010 yet. This is what I had to do to upgrade the web application to use the Visual Studio 2010 ReportViewer control: Install the Report Viewer 2010 redistributable from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a941c6b2-64dd-4d03-9ca7-4017a0d164fd&displaylang=en. The setup program will install the Visual Studio 2010 ReportViewer assemblies in GAC as version 10.0.0.0 assemblies. Updated the web page as follows (changes in bold): <%@ Page language="c#" Codefile="Demo.aspx.cs" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="Prologika.Demo" %> <%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" Namespace="Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms" TagPrefix="rsweb" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"...
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Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack Available
May 12, 2010 / 2 Comments »
Microsoft released the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Feature Pack. Among other things, it includes Report Builder 3.0, Reporting Services SharePoint Add-in, and PowerPivot for Excel.
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Atlanta.MDF Presentation
May 11, 2010 / No Comments »
My presentation "What's New in Reporting Services 2008 R2" for the local Atlanta.MDF group went well last night. We had some 80 people attending and I had some great questions. Too bad I couldn't beat my previous attendance record. I guess rain and traffic were deterrent factors. Thanks for everyone who attended! I posted the presentation materials on my website. It should be available shortly on the Atlanta.MDF site as well.
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Online Analysis Services 2008 Class on May 17th
May 7, 2010 / No Comments »
There is still time to register for the online Applied Analysis Services 2008 class run on May 17th. No travel, no hotel expenses, just 100% content delivered right to your desktop! This intensive 3-day online class (14 training hours) teaches you the knowledge and skills to master Analysis Services to its fullest. Use the opportunity to ask questions and learn best practices. For more information or to register click here!
Training
We offer onsite and online Business Intelligence classes! Contact us about in-person training for groups of five or more students.For more information or to register click here!
Books
Learn Power BI at your own pace with our latest book Applied Microsoft Power BI. Targeting information workers, data analysts, pros, and developers, It is designed as an easy-to-follow guide for learning how to implement BI solutions spanning the entire personal-team-organizational BI spectrum.
