• SQL PASS Summit 2014 Links

    November 13, 2014 / No Comments »

    Don't miss the gist of SQL Pass Summit 2014. Keynote Day One: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx?watch=7Pum0vfYtSk Keynote Day Two: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx?watch=g8DSwPjmLv4 All PASStv sessions can be found here: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx

  • Presenting at Dama-Georgia and Atlanta BI Group

    November 2, 2014 / No Comments »

    I'll present at DAMA Georgia Chapter on November 12. The topic will be "Best Practices for Establishing a Solid BI Foundation". For more details, please visit the event page. Don't know where to start with BI or if you're on the right track? Just like everything else, a successful BI rollout is based on a solid foundation. Targeting BI managers, technology officers, and architects, this advisory and technical session presents proven best practices to implementing BI for mid-size and large organizations. I'll present approaches and recommendations for the main layers of the BI architectural stack, ranging from staging databases, data marts and warehouses, semantic layers, and reporting tools. We'll discuss self-service and organizational BI, Big Data, and emerging technologies, and how they complement each other. Some of the concepts will be accompanied by demos using the Microsoft BI stack. Then, on December 15th, I'll present "Microsoft BI 2014 Review" at...

  • Operational BI with Azure Stream Analytics

    October 30, 2014 / No Comments »

    Operational BI with Azure Stream Analytics

    There is a lot of talk nowadays about Internet of Things (IoT). According to Gartner, there will be nearly 26 billion IoT devices by 2020. Naturally, the data generated by these devices needs to processed and analyzed, very often in real time. Indeed, an increasing number of customers need real-time (operational) analytics performed over a stream of events, such as data coming from sensors, barcode readers, social streams, and all sorts of other devices. Currently, .NET developers could use SQL Server StreamInsight to implement on-premise custom CEP (complex event processing) solutions. However, implementing StreamInsight-based applications is not easy as it requires solid .NET and LINQ skills. Today, Microsoft announced the public preview of the Azure Stream Analytics service that allows organizations to perform stream analytics in the cloud. What's interesting is that Microsoft made a significant effort to simplify CEP with the promise that "you can be up and running...

  • Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on Oct 27th

    October 26, 2014 / No Comments »

    Join us on Monday, October 27th for our next meeting of Atlanta MS BI Group to learn about predictive analytics and how to actually do it. Presentation: Mine Craft   Level: Intermediate Date: Monday, October 27th, 2014 Time 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place: South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room) 115 Perimeter Center Place Atlanta, GA 30346 Overview: Why you should be mining your data and how to actually do it. Every company needs a rock star. We want it to be you. This session will give real world examples of data mining successes as well as walk you through how to get started down the path of data enlightenment, so that you too can say "I Am A Data Miner℠". Speaker: Mark Tabladillo provides enterprise data science analytics advice and solutions. He uses Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining, SAS, SPSS, R, and Hadoop (among other tools)....

  • Sybase Integration

    October 19, 2014 / No Comments »

    Sybase Integration

    A Major League Baseball team engaged us to implement the foundation of their data analytics platform. They partner with TicketMaster for ticketing and sales. Interestingly, besides the TicketMaster cloud hosting that everyone is familiar with, Ticketmaster also offers a client application called Archtics to allow customers to sell tickets on premise. The client application uses a Sybase database (as you probably know, Sybase was acquired by SAP) that syncs with the host. Fortunately, Sybase and SQL Server has a lot in common but in the process we had to figure out a way to pull data from the Sybase database. To do so, you need to follow these steps: Install the SQL Anywhere Database Client Download. During development, you will need the 32-bit driver because BIDS/SSDT is a 32-bit app. When running via SQL Server Agent, you'll need the 64-bit driver. Create an ODBC data source. Again you need to...

  • Looking for Talent

    October 18, 2014 / No Comments »

    We have two contract positions in Alpharetta, GA. Contact us at info@prologika.com if you are interested. BA ANALYST (4-MONTH CONTRACT) Reviews, analyzes, and evaluates business systems and user needs. Documents requirements, defines scope and objectives, and formulates systems to parallel overall business strategies. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 4-6 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Familiar with relational database concepts, and client-server concepts. Relies on experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of complicated tasks. May lead and direct the work of others. A wide degree of creativity and latitude is expected. Typically reports to a manager. CLIENT-SERVER TABLEAU DEVELOPER (1 YEAR CONTRACT) Reviews, analyzes, and modifies programming systems including encoding, testing, debugging and installing to support an organization's client/server software applications. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 4-6 years of experience...

  • Applied Excel and Analysis Services e-Learning Course Available

    October 8, 2014 / No Comments »

    BI solutions typically include a semantic layer. In Microsoft BI, the role of a semantic layer is fulfilled by Multidimensional cubes or Tabular models, whose virtues I extolled in this newsletter. If you invested in an SSAS model already, congratulations! You've done the lion's share. But as you know, the next step is to train your business users and get them all excited about BI. This is not a simple task. And, if you plan to use Excel to offload reporting effort, the task is even more difficult because Excel is packed with BI features. This is why I put together a recorded e-learning "Applied Excel and Analysis Services" class. Having more than 5 hours of video content, the class sells for only $120 per student. And, if you use coupon PROLOGIKA-EXCEL-1 by end of October, you can get it for only $90. To BI managers and BI developers: You've implemented...

  • Optimizing Distinct Count Excel Reports

    October 4, 2014 / No Comments »

    I wonder how many people believe that Tabular DistinctCount outperforms Multidimensional judging by Excel reports alone. In this case, an insurance company reported a performance degradation with Excel reports connected to a multidimensional cube. One report was taking over three minutes to run and it was requesting multiple fields on rows (insured, insured state, insured city, policy number, policy year, underwriter, and a few more) and about a dozen measures, including several distinct count measures, such as claim count, open claim count, and so on. The report would only need subtotals on three of the fields added to the ROWS zone. The cube had about 20 GB a disk footprint so the data size is not the issue here. The real issue is the crappy MDX queries that Excel auto-generates because they are asking for subtotals for all fields added to ROWS, using the following pattern: NON EMPTY CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin(CrossJoin( Hierarchize({DrilldownLevel({[Insured].[Insured...

  • MVP for 11 Years

    October 2, 2014 / No Comments »

    Microsoft awarded me again with the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for SQL Server. This is an annual award given to selected individuals worldwide in recognition for their expertise and contribution to the community. This makes it 11 consecutive years for me as SQL MVP!

  • Atlanta MS BI Group Meeting on Sep 29th

    September 26, 2014 / No Comments »

    Join us on Monday, September 29th for our meeting of Atlanta MS BI Group to learn about DAX – the programming language of Power Pivot and Tabular. Presentation: DAX 101   Level: Beginner Date: Monday, September 29th, 2014 Time 6:30 – 8:30 PM ET Place: South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room) 115 Perimeter Center Place Atlanta, GA 30346 Overview: In this session, we will look at the new BI query language for PowerPivot and Tabular - DAX. This session will give you an introduction to PowerPivot and Data Analysis eXpressions (DAX) and will provide you the necessary understanding to start using DAX in your environment for data analysis. No prior experience with DAX is needed to attend this session. Speaker: Damu Venkatesan is a Business Intelligence Consultant with over 25 years of IT experience. His experience includes architecting solutions in Business Intelligence using SQL Server, SharePoint & data management. He is...

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