As an update to my previous post, SQL Server 2005 SP2 is now officially available. The SP2 build is 9.00.3042. A SP2 landing page is available too that includes links to the SP2 release, KB articles, marketing information about the benefits of SP2.
As a personal contributor to Service Pack 2 (mainly in the areas of Reporting Services SharePoint integration and Analysis Services), I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks for Russell Christopher’s blog, we now know that the final release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is very close to going live. I will update this blog when the download link is known. I listed the SP2 major BI-related enhancements in this blog. The most significant ones (RS-SharePoint integration, enhanced Excel OLAP and data mining features) makes SP2 a major milestone in the Microsoft Business Intelligence roadmap.
It’s time for my annual presentation for the Atlanta.MDF group. This time, the topic will be the SSRS-SharePoint integration mode with SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 which I blogged about before. I’ve uploaded the PowerPoint slides to my website.
Now that I’ve read the Analysis Services Performance Guide (or shall we call it a mini-book) which I announced in my previous blog, I found it to be a great read. I’d recommend it to anyone who would like to get more insights not only about performance tuning UDM but also about the inner workings of the server.
Some caveats… The guide doesn’t answer the perennial and fundamental question about partitioning a large UDM. As I explained in my UDM Data Islands blog, Microsoft scaled down from the initial “super cube” approach and now advocates splitting a large cube into smaller subcubes (which Jamie McClellan referred to as “data islands”) for performance reasons. What I was hoping to find is some performance guidelines and metrics about at what data loads should this split occur. Since this is so important from a performance standpoint, I failed to understand also why there is no reference to linked measure groups and dimensions whatsoever.
Finally, the guide is a bit light from a capacity planning and load-balancing standpoint. Hopefully, there will soon a refresh of the “Creating Large-Scale, Highly Available OLAP Sites: A Step-by-Step Guide” whitepaper.
The highly-anticipated Analysis Services 2005 performance whitepaper is finally here. I found a few things intresting glancing at it:
Something to sure keep me busy when the winter storm hits Atlanta tomorrow…
Sometimes, you may need to have a configuration setting that is stored outside UDM. For example, you may need to store a connection string to a database that will supply the allowed set for dynamic security. As with SSRS, you can use the msmdsrv.exe.config file for this purpose like so:
<configuration>
<startup>
<requiredRuntime
version=“v2.0.50727“
safemode=“true“ />
</startup>
<runtime>
. . .
</runtime>
<appSettings>
<add
key=“connectionString“
value=“connection string here“ />
</appSettings>
</configuration>
This shouldn’t come to surprise since the SSAS server process hosts a .NET application domain to execute SSAS stored procedures. Once the configuration settings are defined, you can read them with a single line inside a SSAS stored procedure:
public
static
string GetConfigSetting(string settingName) {
return settingValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[settingName]; // need a reference to System.Configuration
}
Its UDM support limitations withstanding (a partial list here), the Report Builder should definitely be on your list if your requirements call for ad-hoc reporting from an SSAS 2005 cube. Here are some Report Builder features that I particularly like:
Of course, the Report Builder-UDM integration will improve in future releases (believe me, I am banging hard on the SSRS-SSAS integration door) to make it even more compelling choice for UDM reporting.
As you probably know by now, Microsoft has recently released Service Pack 1 of Visual Studio.NET 2005. Since the Report Viewer controls are owned by the VS.NET team, it turned out that they have been updated also. Many bug fixes have been implemented. The new features include:
Report Viewer ASP.NET Control Enhancements
Both ASP.NET and Windows Forms versions
Strangely, VS.NET 2005 SP1 doesn't update the product documentation (perhaps, the next edition of MSDN library will) so you need to rely on the online documentation.
How can you tell if you have the SP1 version of the controls? Once you install SP1 (don't interrupt the second part!!!), open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\ReportViewer. Right-click on one of the assemblies there (e.g. Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms.dll), choose Properties and flip to the Version tab. The file version should be 8.0.50727.762 and it should match the GAC version of the same assembly.
In the spirit of the season, the SQL Server team give us the third (and probably last before the final release) CTP3 build (version 9.00.3033.0000) for the forthcoming SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2.
The December 2006 edition of the SQL Server 2005 Samples and Database is available for download.
