At the Atlanta BI meeting last night, there was a question from the audience about differences between Inmon and Kimball and which methodology should be followed when implementing a data warehouse. I'll recapture my thoughts and the feedback I shared. As BI practitioners, most of us use methodologies and it's easy to fall in love with a specific methodology. But sometimes methodologies conflict each other.…
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As you know, Microsoft BI is tightly interwoven with Excel on the desktop and SharePoint on the server. Most complaints about SharePoint fall in two categories: Complexity – SharePoint is like the ocean. The further you go, the deeper it gets. Troubleshooting is no fun. You know it and I know it. Cost – Most BI features require SharePoint Server Enterprise. Besides the product cost,…
Read articleOur next Atlanta Microsoft BI meeting will be on Monday, January 27th. The main presentation is "Bus Matrix - the Foundation of your Dimensional Data Model" the speaker is Bill Anton. The meeting will be sponsored by TEK Systems. I hope you can make it. The Bus Matrix is the cornerstone of a successful Dimensional Data Modeling strategy. It serves many purposes: from communicating requirements,…
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Power Pivot (and Tabular) uses the Access Connectivity Engine (ACE) provider to import from text files. This provider was originally designed for Microsoft Access databases and it's limited to import files no larger than 2 GB (or 4 GB with the Office cumulative update from April 2012) as explained here. The Power Pivot Table Import Wizard allows you to import from delimited files and only…
Read articleA customer is moving from Impromptu to SSRS. One of the SSRS missing features that was very important for this customer was the Imprompu pick list that allows users to copy a list of parameter values, such as a list entered in Notepad, to the parameter prompt. For example, the user might get a list of account codes via e-mail and this list may vary…
Read articleIn the spirit of the last day of 2013, I'm sipping eggnog and contemplating on BI in 2013. BEST Microsoft leads the Gartner's 2013 Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant. Microsoft leads the Gartner's 2013 Data Warehouse Magic Quadrant. Power View connectivity to Multidimensional (DAXMD) released in CU4 of SQL Server 2012 SP1. SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse appliance released with Hadoop support at very attractive…
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