• SharePoint 2010 and Excel 2013 Power Pivot

    December 7, 2013 / No Comments »

    I've start seeing customers moving to or considering Office 2013 for self-service BI. Naturally, the end users would like to share their Excel 2013 self-service data models by deploying to SharePoint. Does SharePoint 2010 support this scenario? Unfortunately not. The user can upload Excel 2013 files and view the embedded reports. However, when he attempts to perform an interactive action (triggers all backend services involved in processing Power Pivot workbooks) he gets the dreaded error "Unable to refresh data for a data connection in the workbook". What's wrong in this case is that due to the Excel 2013 changes to support Power Pivot natively, Excel Services must load the data model in a different way. This is discussed in more details in the "'Unable to refresh data for a data connection in the workbook' error when you interact with an Excel 2013 workbook in a SharePoint Server 2010 farm" article...

  • Presenting Visualization Options in Microsoft BI

    December 7, 2013 / No Comments »

    If you have some time amidst the holiday rush, join me on Monday, December 9th, at the Atlanta BI meeting, where I'll present Visualization Options in Microsoft BI. "Confused about visualization choices for your BI solution? How should you design a dashboard to impress your management? Don't know what presentation options exist for organizational and self-service BI? Join us to find answers to these questions and share best practices about the visualization tools in the Microsoft BI platform." Our sponsor will be Computer Associates and you'll learn about the latest Erwin release. Also, don't forget about the user group community party on December 16th.

  • Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert

    November 13, 2013 / No Comments »

    Just got myself upgraded from MCTIP BI (which retires on January 31st, 2014) to the new MCSE BI certification by passing the three required exams. Over the course of almost 20 years, I've managed to stay current and accumulate a healthy dose of certifications (some of them retired by now), including: 1996: Microsoft Certified Professional 1996: Microsoft Certified Solution Developer 2002: Microsoft Certified Application Developer 2003: Microsoft Certified Trainer 2006: Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist 2011: Microsoft Certified IT Professional 2013: Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate 2013: Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert Some people doubt the benefits of certifications. True, having a certification might not be a true testament of skills or expertise just like someone who only reads or writes books is not a true practitioner. But as with anything in life, I believe that the more you put in, the more you get out. While it's hard to measure the intangible...

  • Finalist for BI and Analytics Innovation Awards

    November 13, 2013 / No Comments »

    Out of 26 applications, our BI solution for Recall Corporation was nominated as one of the six finalists for the BI and Analytics Innovation Awards presented tonight by the Atlanta TAG B/I society! Although we didn't win the award, we're honored to be shortlisted. Eric Falthzik, Co-chairman at Technology Association of Georgia - Business Intelligence and Analytics Society and Director of Customer Intelligence at Cox Communications said that this is most interesting and sophisticated Microsoft-based solution that he's seen. I'd like to thank Recall for giving us the opportunity to implement an innovative BI solution that changes the way they analyze their business. I'd like to also thank the TAG B/I panelists for appreciating its value.

  • Passing Large Report Parameters

    November 8, 2013 / No Comments »

    Scenario: A custom application needs to display a filter dialog to prompt the user to select accounts from a tree consisting of thousands of nodes, such as a tree that organizes the accounts in levels. Once the user makes the selection, the application passes the account list to a report parameter so that the report can show the data for the selected accounts only. Issue: The filter list could get rather large. Even if the application follows the Excel filtering pattern to include only the parent node if no child nodes are selected, you might end up with a list consisting of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of accounts. However, Reporting Services has limits on the parameter size. When you test the report in the Report Designer, the report parameter is limited to some 32,000 characters. The Report Viewer doesn't have this limitation so a string-type report parameter can deceptively take...

  • Optimizing Dimension Data Security

    October 29, 2013 / No Comments »

    Dimension data security is a great feature of Analysis Services and one of the top reasons to strongly consider a semantic layer in your BI implementations, as I mentioned in my "Why Semantic Layer" newsletter. That's because the server automatically secures the cube at connect time so you don't have to implement your own security framework and secure every report query. If you are new to dimension data security, I covered it in various places including this article that I wrote for SQL Magazine a while back. One thing to be aware of is that the server applies dimension data security when the user sends the first query after the connection is established even if this query doesn't specifically request the secured dimension, e.g. SELECT NULL ON 0 FROM [CubeName]. Many things happen at this point (see the steps after "Dimension security is applied to all attributes" in this Mosha blog)....

  • The SharePoint 2013 Data Model

    October 27, 2013 / No Comments »

    Somehow, this PowerPivot for SharePoint gem escaped my attention but it's a very important deployment enhancement that was more than likely initiated by Power BI and the cloud. Starting with SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 and SharePoint 2013, you can set up a dedicated SSAS server in SharePoint mode outside the SharePoint farm and configure the farm to point to it. This was possible as a result of all the integration work done between Excel Calculation Services, SharePoint and AS for the 2013 release. Previously, the SSAS in SharePoint configuration mode instance had to be installed on the SharePoint application server. This brings more flexibility to scaling out your PowerPivot environment outside SharePoint and simplifies the PowerPivot setup. For example, to scale out Analysis Services, you can simply add a new SSAS server configured in SharePoint mode. Excel Calculation Services will balance the load between all available SSAS servers...

  • Presenting at SQL Saturday Charlotte

    October 9, 2013 / No Comments »

    Lots of public appearances this month! I'll be presenting "Best Practices for Implementing an Enterprise BI Solution" at SQL Saturday Charlotte BI Edition on October 19th immediately after SQL Pass. I hope to see you there!

  • Presenting at Visual Analytics Science and Technology Conference

    October 5, 2013 / No Comments »

    I believe that the Pareto 80/20 principle applies well to a sound BI strategy where 80% of the BI needs should be addressed by Organizational BI (data warehouse, semantic layer, dashboards, operational reports, descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, big data, etc.) and 20% should be left for self-service BI. One of the areas where self-service BI excels is to promote lateral thinking. A business users can quickly test ideas and hypotheses by importing, mashing up, and visualizing data. This is why I'm excited to present at the Visual Analytics Science and Technology Conference in Atlanta on October 16th. The session title is "Self Help BI: How Self-service BI Promotes Lateral Thinking" and it's included in the "Using Visual Analytics to Foster Lateral Thinking about Business Problems" workshop. I'll show how a business users can use the Excel reporting and data mining capabilities to test ideas and then share the results by...

  • Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio

    October 4, 2013 / No Comments »

    In my previous blog, I was somewhat hard on Oracle for not testing their connectivity software property. On a positive note, I like their effort to integrate Oracle Developer Tools with Visual Studio. This video provides a nice intro to this feature. Basically, Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio fulfills the same role as the Visual Studio built-in support for SQL Server, including designing objects, querying databases, and even tuning queries in Server Explorer. It's great to see vendors working together and Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio is a true affirmation that times are changing for better.

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