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Reporting Services 2008 Dashboard Goes Live
January 5, 2009 / No Comments »
Thanks to the Robert Bruckner's blog, I've learned that Microsoft has published the Reporting Services 2008 Information Aggregator. It is a cool dashboard page that aggregates a variety of resources related to Reporting Services, such as training content, white papers, blogs and more. I'm proud to be featured as an MVP J The page also includes to my most recent books and training videos I've authored. Kudos go to the Reporting Services user education team who worked hard to implement this page. Check out the SSRS aggregator and add it to your favorites.
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SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 is Out
December 18, 2008 / No Comments »
Yesterday, Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3. Reporting Services Report Builder added support with Teradata. Note that some manual configuration is required to turn things 'on' as well as you need to install the .Net provider from Teradata.
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Dimensionalizing Pivoted Measures
December 16, 2008 / No Comments »
Issue You have a table with pivoted measures, such as: Use the following statement to create and populate the table: CREATE TABLE pvt (VendorID int, DateID int, MaturityAmount1 int, MaturityAmount2 int, MaturityAmount3 int, RepricingAmount1 int, RepricingAmount2 int, RepricingAmount3 int); GO INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (1,1,4,3,5,4,4, 100); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (2,1,4,1,5,5,5, 100); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (1,2,4,3,5,4,4, 200); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (2,2,4,1,5,5,5, 200); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (3,1,4,3,5,4,4, 300); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (3,2,4,3,5,4,4, 400); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (3,3,4,3,5,4,4, 100); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (4,1,4,2,5,5,4, 100); INSERT INTO pvt VALUES (5,1,5,1,5,5,5, 200); GO Let's say you need a way to unpivot the results in the following format which is more suitable for OLAP: In this way, you eliminate the repeating measure columns with a single column. Here, the BucketID column is introduced so you could join the results to a dimension to let the user cross-tab the results...
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Troubleshooting the SharePoint Add-in for Reporting Services
November 19, 2008 / No Comments »
A common issue when setting up Reporting Services integration with SharePoint is that the SharePoint add-in is not installed properly although the setup program doesn't indicate any issues. More than likely, the culprit is that the person who installed the add-in is not SharePoint Web farm administrator and Site Collection administrator. As a first stop for troubleshooting SharePoint integration issues, you should examine the add-in log after the add-in setup completes to verify if it was installed successfully. You'll find the log file (RS_SP_<N>.log) in your temp folder, such as \Documents and Settings\<login>\Local Settings\Temp. Specifically, check that all activation tasks have completed successfully and that there are no errors. If all is well, the log files should look as follows: User: <userid> Installing Report Server feature. Calling copyappbincontents command. copyappbincontents command completed successfully. Adding Report Server feature to farm. Installed Report Server feature. Activating Report Server feature to root level site...
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Cumulative Update 2 for SQL Server 2008
November 19, 2008 / No Comments »
Microsoft has released the Cumulative Update 2 build (build number 1779) for SQL Server 2008. The update is not publicly available as of now. It has to be released individually based on whether you are running into a bug fixed in the build and it is password-protected. Among other things, it fixes the freeze issue associated with opening SSAS projects in BIDS.
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Referencing Parameters in SSRS Calculated Members
November 10, 2008 / No Comments »
Issue: You author an SSRS report that connects to a cube. You want to create a calculated member that uses a report parameter. For example, the Selector calculated member in the following query returns 1 if a given employee has exceeded 1 million in sales for the dates specified by the user in the report parameter. WITH MEMBER [Measures].[Selector] AS SUM ( StrToSet(@DateCalendar), iif([Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount]>1000000, 1, NULL) ) select non empty {[Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount],[Measures].[Reseller Order Quantity], selector} on 0, non empty (Filter([Employee].[Employee].[Employee].Members, [Measures].[Selector]>0) * [Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year]) on 1 from (select StrToSet(@DateCalendar) on 0 from [Adventure Works]) However, when you run the query you get the following error if you target Analysis Services 2005: The DateCalendar parameter cannot be resolved because it was referenced in an inner subexpression. Obviously, the built-in SSAS data provider has an issue parsing parameters in a calculated member. This issue is apparently fixed in...
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Dundas Chart Controls for .NET Available
October 27, 2008 / No Comments »
On Friday, Microsoft released chart controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. These are re-tooled Dundas .NET chart controls which are now baked in the .NET framework. This is important because you can add the same stunning Dundas chart features to your Windows Forms and ASP.NET applications without external dependencies or licensing fees. It also minimizes your learning curve, as the Dundas controls share the same object model across technologies, e.g. Windows Forms to ASP.NET to Reporting Services. Currently, only the Dundas chart control has made the cut to .NET. There is a sticky post at the top of the forums that has all of the links. Keep an eye on the PDC announcements today for more BI goodies.
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SSAS WHERE vs. Subselect Puzzle
October 23, 2008 / No Comments »
I've been involved recently in a quest to optimize an SSAS 2008 long-running query that would return the 12-month history of a KPI. Since the KPI was displayed on a dashboard page alongside other KPIs and charts, it was important to optimize the query as much possible. Rephrased to Adventure Works, the query went something like this: WITH MEMBER increaser AS Iif([Measures].[Internet Sales Amount]>([Measures].[Internet Sales Amount], [Date].[Calendar].PrevMember),1,NULL) MEMBER CustomersWithIncrease as Sum([Customer].[Customer].[Customer], [Measures].[increaser]) SELECT [Measures].[CustomersWithIncrease] on 0, ParallelPeriod ([Date].[Calendar].[Month], 11, [Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2003]&[12]) :[Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2003]&[12] on 1 from (select -{[Customer].[Customer].&[20075]} on 0 from [Adventure Works]) where {[Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Country].&[United States], [Sales Territory].[Sales Territory Country].&[United Kingdom]} This query compares the sales for each customer with the customer's sales for the previous month and returns the number of customers who have increased sales for the past 12 months. Also, the query uses a subselect to exclude a customer and a WHERE clause that restricts the...
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Report Builder 2.0 RTM’ed
October 18, 2008 / No Comments »
Today, Microsoft released Report Builder 2.0 (build 10.00.1600.60) , as Robert Bruckner announced in his blog. This is a major milestone in the Reporting Services roadmap. In my opinion, Report Builder 2.0 is one of the most important and exciting features of Reporting Services 2008 as it bridges the gap between standard and end-user (ad hoc) reporting. You should definitely consider Report Builder and Analysis Services for your ad-hoc reporting projects.
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People Ready BI
October 8, 2008 / No Comments »
At the BI Conference in Seattle, Microsoft announced the future roadmap for next BI-oriented SQL Server release, nee Kilimanjaro, that will focus on three major teams: • Self Service Analytics • Self Service Reporting • Sharing, Collaboration & Management The Self Service Analytics will encompass projects Madison (a share-nothing MPP scale-out version of SQL Server, powered by DATAllegro technology) and Gemini, which I mentioned before. The Self Service Reporting is where Reporting Services.NEXT will come in, of course. Microsoft announced the acquisition of 90 Degree Software. In case you are not familiar with this company, 90 Degree Software has built a very comprehensive report designer that is very similar to Report Builder 2.0. What I expect from this acquisition is more end-user enhancement in Report Builder 2.0 and improved Analysis Services integration. Expect also a shared report library that lets the end user save and share report elements and templates...
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