• SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 (RC0)

    June 7, 2008 / No Comments »

    Microsoft declared build #1442.32 to be the official SQL 2008 RC0 build and made it publicly available. Key SSRS improvements in this build: Rich text formatting. You can now format the text inside a textbox with different styles. Report Wizard to let the user auto-generate the report definition. Fully functional MDX Query Designer. An updated build of the Report Builder 2.0 (aka Report Designer Preview) will be available via a web download. The URL link is not known at this point.

  • BI Salary Survey

    May 20, 2008 / No Comments »

    Not sure how much your BI expertise is worth? The 2008 TDWI Salary, Roles, and Responsibilities Report TDWI survey may help.

  • Intelligencia Query

    May 15, 2008 / No Comments »

    Chris Webb, a fellow MVP and MDX guru, who's blog is a must-read for all SSAS junkies, was kind enough to let me take a look at the Intelligencia Query product he's been working on for a while with Andrew Wiles. Chris announced the product back in April which is now selling as a commercial offering. Now, lots of things have been said about the current state of the SSRS-SSAS integration, which is to say the least wanting. In a previous blog, I wrote "In my opinion, the biggest challenge the Microsoft BI initiative faces today is the inadequate support for Analysis Services." Alas, we won't witness an improved SSRS-SSAS integration in SQL Server 2008 as Microsoft decided to focus on other areas and priorities. Rest assured though that Microsoft understands the importance of this integration scenario. I personally have voiced my concerns on a few occasions and have put...

  • SSAS HTTP Connectivity and SharePoint

    May 12, 2008 / No Comments »

    Scenario You won't enable SSAS HTTP connectivity via a SharePoint site. Issue You followed the instructions in the Configuring HTTP Access to SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 whitepaper but you get " Failed to start monitoring directory changes" error when you try to access the SSAS server by its pump URL, such as http://www.adventure-works/olap/msmdpump.dll. Solution Ignore the step where you had to create an olap pool and assign the OLAP vroot to it. Instead, assign the vroot to the same IIS application pool as the one the SharePoint site belongs to, such as SharePoint -80. In addition, make sure you enable the web extension to the pump dll, as explained in the above article. If you have created non-domain Windows accounts on the server for testing, make sure that the server and local Windows accounts (the one the user will use to log in to...

  • Sharing Lost Reports with Web Users

    May 10, 2008 / No Comments »

    Scenario You need to configure a SharePoint site integrated with Reporting Services for Internet access. In our case, the end users would authenticate with Windows security by using local Windows account created on the web server. Issues Report URLs reference the machine NetBIOS name and fail to execute with "The path of the item '<path' is not valid. The full path must be less than 260 characters long; other restrictions apply". Same happens when Report Builder tries to load models. Solution This one took a few hours to solve: Since Reporting Services 2008 only supports access from SharePoint URLs in the default zone, change the public URL of the default zone (SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration -> Operations -> Alternate Access Mappings) to the web server Internet URL, such as http://www.adventure-works.com/. This will take care of the report URLs which now should include the server Internet address. However, requesting reports would...

  • Tricksy Parameter Prompts

    April 21, 2008 / 9 Comments »

    Q: How to make the darn parameter drop-down list wider in HTMLViewer? HTMLViewer is the Report Manager control that displays the report when you view the report. A: HTMLViewer supports limited customization via a CSS stylesheet. Copy HTMLViewer.css to MyHTMLViewer.css in the same folder (Reporting Services\ReportServer\Styles). Note that the actual folder path varies between SQL Server versions. Add the following CSS style to MyHTMLViewer.css SELECT { font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; width:200px } As a result, all SELECT elements on the page (all dropdowns, such as parameter prompts, zoom, export) will pick up these settings. Configure the server to use the custom stylesheet by one of these options: If you want to apply the custom styles to all reports, add a new HTMLViewerStyleSheet element to the rsreportserver.config file, such as: <Configuration> ... <HTMLViewerStyleSheet>MyStyleSheet</HTMLViewerStyleSheet> ... </Configuration> Note that due to an unfortunate bug, the HTMLViewerStyleSheet setting doesn't work with February CTP of...

  • Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Goes E-Book

    March 27, 2008 / No Comments »

    I happy to announce my book "Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005" is now available as an Adobe PDF e-book. The first retailer that Google Alerts reported to sell it is Diesel Ebooks. It should soon pop up on all popular ebook retailer sites, such as ebooks.com. The suggested retail price for the ebook version is set to $39.95, which is ten bucks cheaper than the suggested retail price of the paper copy. The ebook is DRM-protected but fully functional with unlimited printing and copying capabilities. The DRM protection is handled by the retailer. Since the distributor is not set up to handle different pricing models, such as buy the paper copy and get the ebook free, there is no discount pricing model for the e-book version at this time. Also, the same book is now available on Amazon Kindle. Since I don't have an Amazon Kindle, I don't know what...

  • The Rational Guide To Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007

    March 15, 2008 / No Comments »

    I have to admit that my preoccupation with Reporting Services and Analysis Services don't leave me much bandwidth nowadays to tackle other Microsoft BI (far less third-party) offerings. One of the products I know I need to catch up is the planning component of PerformanceServer, formerly known as Biz#. Fortunately, Nick and Adrian followed up on their The Rational Guide To Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, which I wrote about, with a new book The Rational Guide To Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Initially, they were planning a single PerformancePoint book but they decided to split it because of book size limitations that the publisher has. The planning piece of PerformancePoint requires more than solid knowledge of Analysis Services because of its strong financial focus. You need to know quite a bit about budgeting, planning, chart of accounts, and other financial concepts. Fortunately, The Rational Guide...

  • SQL Server 2008 February CTP Is Out

    February 22, 2008 / 1 Comment »

    February CTP is out. It brings the much anticipated integration with Visual Studio 2008 and the new BIDS Report Designer. Download the February CTP here: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/prodinfo/download.mspx Updated Books Online for February CTP are available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=19DB0B42-A5B2-456F-9C5C-F295CDD58D7A&displaylang=en What's new in Reporting Services February CTP (compared to the previous November 2007 CTP): Support for Microsoft Word Rendering This allows users to render reports as Word documents that are compatible with Microsoft Word 2000 and greater. Data Visualization Enhancements Data Visualization Enhancements provides significantly improved support for Chart and adds support for Gauge controls directly within reports. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies The SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies allows you to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 report rendering, processing and management capabilities in SharePoint Integrated mode.  This version includes Data-driven subscriptions. Report Design Enhancements in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) BIDS overall has...

  • Last Non Empty Affairs

    February 6, 2008 / No Comments »

    Enterprise Edition of Analysis Services 2005 and 2008 supports semi-additive functions, such as LastNonEmpty, LastChild, and so on, to facilitate working with semi-additive measures, such as account balances and inventory snapshots. For example, the screenshot below shows LastNonEmtpy in action. To demonstrate this, I added a Last Sales measure to the Internet Sales measure group in the Adventure Works cube and set its AggregationFunction property to LastNonEmpty. Of course, this doesn't make much sense because sales amounts are fully additive but it's OK for demo purposes. As expected, the quarter and year totals show the last non empty sales. The customer totals are correct too because semi-additive measures sum across any dimension except Time. But what about the grand total of $14.98? Shouldn't we get the sum of the quarter (or year) subtotals? To answer this question, we need to understand how LastNonEmpty operates. LastNonEmtpy works across time and not...

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