Following on from my post on Friday, Session submission is now closed. There have been very close to 100 sessions submitted about pretty much everything to do with SQL Server (some very loosely!!)
Unfortunately we can’t fit all of these sessions into two days and it’s impossible to choose, so unlike many other conferences, it’s up to you lot to vote for the ones you want! As long as you have a registration on the SQLBits website you can vote (even if you don’t know if you can make it yet!). You get to vote for 10 sessions and the top sessions within each track will get the gig!
Power to the people!
I’m sure you’ve heard already that the next SQLbits runs from September 30th to October 2nd at York University but today (16th July) is the last chance if you want to submit a presentation. I’d better get mine in!
I can’t imagine too many people will have this issue, but just in case you you have a similar environment it’s bad news I’m afraid. Connections from 64-bit applications to AS2000 aren’t possible as there is no x64 oledb 8.0 AS driver. If you’re running IA64 then you’re fine as MS built a library for this version (?)
The alternatives? Run SharePoint and IIS in 32-bit mode or, probably better, point out to your boss/customer/IT dept that 2010 subtract 2000 = 10 years and that it really is time to upgrade to the wonders of SQL2008 R2. The fact they can actually get support for this version might help swing it ;)
MSFT have just a published a new document about how to use PowerPivot Cubes\workbooks as data sources for your PPS dashboards. Worth a read as it doesn’t work quite the same way as a standard AS data source in PPS. A couple of things stood out for me:
Every table, including a Fact table, in the PowerPivot window is shown as a dimension in PerformancePoint. The columns in each table are represented as an attribute hierarchy under the respective dimension in PPS. In a similar manner, calculated columns in the PowerPivot window are displayed as attribute hierarchies for that dimension.
Also:
PerformancePoint uses the ADOMD.NET driver to connect to PowerPivot applications.
In order to use a PowerPivot model in PerformancePoint, you must install the new SQL Server 2008 R2 ADOMD.NET driver on the servers that are running the PerformancePoint service in the SharePoint Server farm. This is not required if such servers also have the server component of PowerPivot, that is the SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint, installed on them.
Whilst the core components of SQL 2008 R2 have been signing autographs on the red carpet, Master Data Services has sneaked quietly in through the back door. If you have MSDN access, download a full version (guessing developer and enterprise only but haven’t checked) and off you go. The install is a not part of the main installation either, you need to run it directly from the DVD\ISO in the MasterDataServices folder. Setup is very simple and there’s some good sample packages to play with.
StreamInsight is on there as well :)
As Chris Webb has already mentioned the latest SQLBits was the best attended and (in our opinion) the slickest event yet. We still want to make it even better though and we can only do that with your feedback. This is all done online and can be completely anonymous if you want. If you can spare five or ten minutes then please use the links below and let us know what you think:
Conference Feedback
Session Feedback
Registration for SQL Bits VI on 16th April is now open – places are limited to sign up quick.
There’s a cracking agenda based on performance tuning and scalability (but still plenty for everyone – not just hard core DBAs).
See you there!
I’m sure a number of you know of UK SQL Server MVP Chris Testa-O’Neill from his many presentations at user groups and conferences. Chris has just authored a new e-learning course for Microsoft which covers the BI stack. From Chris:
"I am pleased to announce the release of the Author Model eCourseCollection 6233 AE: Implementing and Maintaining Business Intelligence in Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: Integration Services, Reporting Services and Analysis Services
This 24-hour collection provides you with the skills and knowledge required for implementing and maintaining business intelligence solutions on SQL Server 2008. You will learn about the SQL Server technologies, such as Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services
This collection also helps to prepare for Exam 70-448 and can be accessed from: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6233.mspx “
Well worth a look I reckon!
Just in case you hadn’t already heard from Chris or Simon the next SQLBits has been confirmed for 16th April at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster. Simon also explains why the tight timescales and only single day event this time.
If you need to find a reason to convince your boss why he should give you a day off to attend just look at the session list from the last SQLBits!
And if you fancy presenting yourself, session submission is open now. You'll need to Login/Join first then complete your Speaker Profile before submitting a Session
See you on the 16th!
Great free resource for pretty much every shapefile map you’ll need :)
Shapefiles for Epi Info
Plug them into your SSRS Map and off you go.
In my last post I had a bit of a moan about the lack of new data visualisation features in PerformancePoint Services but to be fair MSFT have really turned up the dial on the data visualisation functionality with the release of Excel 2007 and SSRS 2008. SQL 2008 R2 sees further advances with features such as Sparklines, Data Bars and indicators being far easier to create in SSRS. There’s still a few things missing from the stack though when compared against some of the pureplay visualisation vendors such as Tableau and Spotfire.
Icon Charts (I’m not actually sure that’s their real name!) are another form of Tufte’s “small multiple” that combines the concepts of lattice/trellis charts and heatmaps. This type of visualisation utilises the user’s perception of colour (hue) and form (size) to allow analysis of multiple categories with multiple quantitative measures.
I was hoping that it might be possible to do something with the new indicators in R2 and though you can use custom images there’s no simple way to hook them up to the data in terms of size and colour.
In this solution (workaround/hack?) I’m using the matrix object again but rather than using an inline chart I’m simply using a square symbol (letter n) from the wingdings font and then setting the colour (with a sequential palette) and size according to the data. My example uses hard-coded values in a switch statement in the expression but you could be cleverer than this and make the values percentages of the maximum in your dataset for example.
Add a couple of legends so that the viewer can clearly see what they are looking at. It’s easy to pick out that SouthWest in Q3 had good revenue but low profit. Is there a Problem? Add a drillthrough to detail report to allow the user to find out.
As always the sample report can be downloaded from here. Alternatively, e-mail devteam(at)adatis(dot)co(dot)uk for a copy.
We’ve been lucky enough (or we rather hassled enough people in MSFT for long enough!) to have been participating in the Office 2010 technical preview for the last couple of months but as it’s all been under NDA haven’t been able to blog about it. This also means that we’ve had a chance to look round SharePoint 2010 and, in particular for me, PerformancePoint Services. Nick Barclay has just done a series of posts about what’s new/improved/different in the new version so go there for the full list. Here’s a quick round up of our first impressions:
What looks good so far:
- SharePoint integration – Whilst Dashboard designer is still pretty much the same product for doing your, errr, dashboard design it’s no longer the admin and security tool as well. This is all carried in SharePoint and in fact you have to set up a specific PPS site to do this. A great deal of effort has obviously gone into this and which looks to have paid off.
- Security is all through SharePoint – no need to set up permissions twice!
- AS Conditional formatting now works.
- Decomp tree is back!!
- Measures can now be formatted independently.
- Workspace browser is now much more intelligently organised.
- Filter by value – you can now restrict rows\columns by value
- Dynamic dimension measures on scorecards- this was a bit of a workaround in 2007 as I’ve posted about previously. This now works properly
- Re-usable filters – Filters can now be shared and re-used across dashboards
Disappointments:
- Lack of improvements for data visualisation – Very disappointing - other than the decomp tree, the visualisation side of PPS has changed little. Still no real control over how your graphs look. The only other new item to be introduced is the Pie Chart!!!! oh dear. Still no bar charts (and I mean Bars not Columns), no chart formatting options or (controllable) second y axis options that I can see :(
- Decomp tree is not a chart type but a right click option from a deployed report. i Like the option to do this from any point in a report but would be nice to have both options.
- It’s still called PerformancePoint! – I have to admit I when I read another blog of Nick’s following the demise of Planning I didn’t entirely agree with him that it should be renamed. Having spent the last ten months trying to explain to various IT departments that PerformancePoint is not the devil and that the Monitoring side has not been affected (usually to no avail) has changed my opinion completely.
- As per Chris’s blog – ProClarity just seems to have disappeared – I know that was never what Monitoring was supposed to be but the lack of an ad-hoc cube browser is a huge oversight.
- Did I mention the lack of data visualisation improvements????
There’s lots more to discuss and there will be more to come over the next few weeks time allowing. SharePoint 2010 looks pretty impressive…
This is a great post from Boyan Penev which I’m sure will be familiar to many of you who design reports for customers. Sometimes you just have to give them what they want even when it goes against what you believe :(
Update: Nick Barclay has made some nice tweaks to the sample here
As I’ve mentioned before, we always try and design reports, dashboards and charts for our customers taking into consideration data visualisation best practices as promoted by Stephen Few, Edward Tufte et al.
Whenever I’m reading Visualisation books and in particular the best practice examples, I always find myself wondering whether:
a) it’s possible with Reporting Services? and
b) it can look as good with Reporting Services?
and this was the case whilst I finally got round to starting to read Few’s new book Now You See It (which I hope to do a review of soon). One of the key principles of data visualisation is “Compared to What?”. It’s all very well presenting the information in a clear fashion but without context it’s hard to argue it’s worth.
The use of a matrix of charts (lattice charts, trellis charts) allows the eye to very easily compare data both horizontally and vertically. This method of display is also known as “Small Multiples” – a term coined by Tufte in his book - Envisioning Information. These charts also allow you to easily add additional dimensions to a two-dimensional display.
I’m sure many of you will have used SSRS inline-charts before in a table (my bullet chart examples use this method) but it’s also possible to do this with the matrix object as well. I’m not going to explain in detail the method to produce in-line charts in SSRS as it’s well documented already in this msdn article but in summary you simply set up your matrix with the appropriate row and column groupings, design your chart outside of the matrix then when it’s ready simply drop it in the data cell.
One thing to make sure you do is to change the maximum setting for your value axis to be the maximum value from your entire dataset using a scoped field expression (=MAX(Fields!Sales_Amount.Value, "DataSet1")). Without this change you will be visually comparing apples with oranges!
With a bit of work on the formatting, the result looks pretty reasonable (though the spread of AdventureWorks data isn’t that great). You can easily see which region is performing best and which category has the best sales.
As usual you can download the sample
As Mark mentions, the one and only Sutha Thiru is climbing Kilimanjaro later this year to raise money for a very good cause - The Iain Rennie Hospice looked after our colleague Jim Wright who sadly died after on Xmas eve last year. Sutha is also paying for the trip himself rather than using the sponsorship to subsidise, so please dig deep and give what you can. http://www.justgiving.com/sutha
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