• Crescent on the Horizon

    November 10, 2010 / No Comments »

    Now that the official word got out during the Ted Kummert's keynote today at SQL PASS, I can open my mouth about Crescent – the code name of an ad-hoc reporting layer that will be released in the next version of SQL Server – Denali. Crescent is a major enhancement to Reporting Services and Microsoft Self-Service BI strategy. Up to now, SSRS didn't have a web-based report designer. Denali will change that by adding a brand new report authoring tool that will be powered by Silverlight. So, this will be the fifth report designer after BIDS, Report Builder 1.0 (not sure if RB 1.0 will survive SQL 11), Report Builder 3.0, Visual Studio Report Designer. Besides brining report authoring to the web, what's interesting about Crescent is that it will redefine the report authoring experience and even what a report is. Traditionally, Reporting Services reports (as well as reports from...

  • ResMon Cube Sample

    November 4, 2010 / No Comments »

    Greg Galloway just published a ResMon cube sample on CodePlex that aggregates execution statistics (rolls up information about Analysis Services such as memory usage by object, perfmon counters, aggregation hits/misses, and current session stats) from Analysis Services dynamic management views (DMVs) and makes it easily available for slicing and dicing in a cube. I think this will be a very useful tool to analyze the runtime performance of an Analysis Services server or as a learning tool to understand how to work with DMVs. Kudos to Greg!

  • Atlanta BI SIG December Meeting

    October 30, 2010 / No Comments »

    If you are use Microsoft BI, live in or within driving distance to Atlanta, and don't know about the Atlanta BI SIG, you are missing a lot. At our last meeting we had some 50+ people and our attendance is growing! Due to the holidays, Atlanta BI SIG will not have a meeting at the end of November and December. Instead, our next meeting will be held on December 6th. I updated the Atlanta BI SIG home page to announce the December meeting. End of the year is a good time for reflecting on the past and planning for the future. Bob Abernathy from Strategy Companion will present BI past, present, and future trends. He will also show us how Strategy Companion integrates with Analysis Services. Topic:         BI: Then and Now?   Level: Beginner Date: Monday, December 6, 2010 Speaker:   Bob Abernethy, SVP & GM of Strategy Companion Corporation...

  • More Dundas Components Move to Microsoft

    October 13, 2010 / No Comments »

    Now, this is great news for Microsoft BI and .NET developers. As announced on the Dundas website, the agreement between Dundas and Microsoft, which allows Dundas to continue sell, enhance, update and support its components, will expire on October 31, 2010. Subsequently, all components change hands and become a Microsoft intellectual property. These components are: Dundas Chart for ASP.NET (Professional and Enterprise), Dundas Chart for Window Forms (Professional and Enterprise), Dundas Chart for SharePoint, Dundas Chart for SQL Server Reporting Services, Dundas Chart for OLAP Services Dundas Gauge for ASP.NET, Dundas Gauge for Windows Forms, Dundas Gauge for SharePoint, Dundas Gauge for SQL Server Reporting Services Dundas Map for ASP.NET, Dundas Map for Windows Forms, Dundas Map for SQL Server Reporting Services Dundas Calendar for SQL Server Reporting Services For me, the most interesting of these is the Dundas Chart for OLAP Services. If you have followed my blog, you...

  • Where is x64 Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-in?

    October 12, 2010 / No Comments »

    Mark Tabladillo delivered a great presentation about using Excel for data mining at our last Atlanta BI SIG meeting. The lack of an Excel 2010 x64 DM add-in came up. There was a question from the audience whether Microsoft has abandoned DM technology since it stopped enhancing it. A concern was also raised that Microsoft might have also neglected the corporate BI vision in favor of self-service BI. That's definitely not the case. I managed to get a clarification from the Microsoft Analysis Services team that Corporate BI will be a major focus in "Denali", which is the code name for the next version of SQL Server – version 11. As far as the long-overdue x64 DM add-in for Excel, Microsoft is working on it and it will be delivered eventually. Meanwhile, the 2007 add-in works with the x32 version of Excel 2010. For those of you going to SQL...

  • Prologika Training Classes

    October 5, 2010 / No Comments »

    Our online classes for the remainder of 2010: Courses Mentor Date Price   Applied SSRS 2008 Teo Lachev 10/26-10/29 12:00-5:00 EDT $799 Register Applied SSAS 2008 Teo Lachev 11/23-11/25 12:00-5:00 EDT $799 Register Applied PowerPivot Teo Lachev 11/29-11/30 12:00-4:00 EDT $599 Register Visit our training page to register and more details.

  • MVP For Another Year!

    October 1, 2010 / No Comments »

    Just got the news that my MVP status got extended for another year! This will make it six consecutive years as MVP and as a member of an elite group of professionals that I am proud of belonging to.

  • Atlanta BI SIG September Meeting

    September 25, 2010 / No Comments »

    Atlanta BI fans, join our next Atlanta BI SIG meeting! Mark Tabladillo (Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, MCAD.NET, MCT) will show us how to do data mining with PowerPivot. And Dundas will demonstrate their latest BI offering – the Dundas dashboard. Here are the details: Please RSVP to help us plan food as follows: Go to the Atlanta BI home page (atlantabi.sqlpass.org). Choose Yes and submit the RSVP survey found at the right top corner of the page.   Main Topic:         Data Mining with PowerPivot 2010   Level: Intermediate Date: Monday, September 27, 2010 Time: 6:30PM Location Matrix Resources 115 Perimeter Center Place Suite 250 (South Terraces Building) Atlanta, GA 30346 Speaker:         Mark Tabladillo (Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, MCAD.NET, MCT) Mark Tabladillo provides consulting and training for data mining with Solid Quality Mentors. He has taught statistics at Georgia Tech and for the graduate business school of the University...

  • Analysis Services Processing Performance

    September 20, 2010 / No Comments »

    Analysis Services has a very efficient processing architecture and server is capable of processing rows as fast as the data source can provide. You should see processing rate in the ballpark 40-50K rows/sec or even better. One of my customers just bought a new shiny HP ProLiant BL680c server only to find out that processing time went three times higher than the old server. I did a simple test where I asked to execute the processing on both the old server and the new server. The query on the old server would return all rows within 2 minutes, while the same query would execute for 20 minutes which averages to about 4K rows processed/sec. This test ruled out Analysis Services right off the bat. It was clear that the network is the bottleneck. Luckily, the server had a lot of processing power, so processing wasn't ten times slower. As it...

  • DynamicHeight Bug

    September 16, 2010 / No Comments »

    DynamicHeight Bug

    The chart region in Reporting Services 2008 introduced the ability to dynamically size charts by setting the DynamicHeight and DynamicWidth properties, as Robert Bruckner explained in his blog. This feature is really useful and I hope one day it makes to the other regions as well. A customer recently reported an issue with their reports where regions would overlap when the report is previewed in Print Layout mode or exported to a hard page renderer, such as PDF. For example, in the report below the radar chart is positioned after the bar chart in RDL. However, in Print Layout preview the radar chart overlaps the bar chart. The customer tried every possible combination to enclose one or more regions in rectangles which helped avoiding the overlapping issue to some degree but introduced other issues. After some digging, I discovered that the issue is caused by the fact that the bar chart...

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