This blog is home to share my experiences, views, learning and findings on BIG Data, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Hadoop, D3, SQL Server, SQL Azure, MS BI - SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, MDX, Visual BI methods, Excel Services, Visio Services, PPS, Powerpivot. I am co-author of the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives - Volume 2 and have reviewed several other books. Feel free to involve me in your projects. I would be happy to help. You can contact me @ contactsidmehta@gmail.com
Sunday, October 31, 2010
SQL Azure Reporting versus SSRS : Challenges in cloud based reporting
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Windows Azure Market Place ( Data Market and App Market ) - Potential jobs for BI Tools
Data Market which was formerly know as Microsoft Codename "Dallas" is now commercially available, and this announcement was made very recently. Also many other significant announcements for the Windows Azure Market Place, which can be read from here. App Market which is another section of services related to application development and hosting would be commercially released, probably early next year.
To have a first look at the DataMarket section of Windows Azure Market Place, check out this video.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Use of SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition with Microsoft and Non-Microsoft BI platforms
Monday, October 25, 2010
Data Source View versus View in Data Source for SSIS , SSAS and SSRS
Friday, October 22, 2010
Web based OLAP client for SSAS : Report Portal
1) It needs to be installed on every client workstation
2) Data visualizations available are more suited for operational reporting than analytical reporting
3) There are almost no features for collaboration i.e. sharing generated reports with other users on a common platform unless you use Office Web Apps or Sharepoint
4) No spatial data support either in consumption or presentation with Bing Maps / Google Maps
Actually Excel has the capability to use OLAP / SSAS cube as a data source, but that does not mean that this capability can be treated as the primary purpose of using Excel. In one of my posts, I mentioned about Analyzer which is a product from Strategy Companion. Recently I came across one another such product - Report Portal.
Zero footprint, SaaS, Cloud are some of the buzz words while selecting a technology / product for solution development, and Report Portal is also a zero footprint OLAP web client for SSAS. In my view, this product lacks that professional and sleek features that is expected from a web client. Documentation is quite poor, export formats of reports are limited, there is no mention of SaaS offering. But some of the noteworthy features of this product are as below:
1) Report portal has got very distinguished data visualizations, which are quite impressive from a data browsing point of view. You would not use these kind of data visualizations generally for reporting, but to develop analytical reports, these visualizations can be quite helpful for analysis. Check out the Pie-Chart Tree Report, which is one of the quite unique kind of data visualization for data analysis.
3) Metadata can be browsed very efficiently, and this product makes a very extensive use of XML/A ( XML for Analysis ). The browsing features are quite friendly to take away the pain of forming MDX queries.
If you use it as a tool to save your OLAP analysis i.e. the results that you gathered while browsing or analyzing OLAP data, and want to stick it in the form of reports on a collaborative platform, it's a nice web client with zero footprint installation ( as it's a web based solution ). But if you are looking out to use as a full fledged self-service enterprise reporting solution out of your OLAP, I would feel much more comfortable and confident in Analyzer than Report Portal.
A wise strategic move can be to use Report Portal when you are taking your baby steps in your OLAP reporting i.e. the phase when you are developing your data marts / data warehouse. This product could well support your OLAP browsing needs efficiently as well as facilitate reporting at the same time, keeping the pressure of immediate reporting from your evolving data warehouse, at bay. When the solution is in the next level, you can choose a SaaS reporting solution like Analyzer and retire Report Portal. Please keep in view, this always depends upon scenarios and it's not a generalized strategy. The key difference between Analyzer and Report Portal is that Analyzer is a reporting solution, and Report portal is a web client and reporting is one of it's features and not a primary function.
Monday, October 18, 2010
StreamInsight Tutorial , StreamInsight Video Tutorial , StreamInsight Webcasts , StreamInsight Labs and StreamInsight Presentations
Friday, October 15, 2010
MS BI Interview questions book covering SSRS SSIS SSAS interview questions and answers
I am of the opinion that create your own book, instead of depending or searching for books related to interview questions. I have not appeared for any job interviews from the past 3.5 years, but when I would start looking out for a change, I would definitely practice this theory :-)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
How to apply Conditional Split in a SSIS package without using Conditional Split transform
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
MS BI POC and SQL Azure POC for better ROI on future projects
Friday, October 08, 2010
Connection error in SQL Azure
- Lock Consumption
- Log File Size
- Uncommitted Transactions
- Transactions blocking system calls
- TempDB Usage and Size
- Excessive Memory Usage
- Maximum Database Size
- Transaction Termination
- Denial of Service Attacks
- Network Problems
- Failover Problems
Confused / Curious / Impressed with the above points ? Well, I cannot take credit for what I have summarized from a SQL Azure whitepaper. Same can be read from here. If not the entire whitepaper, at least the above list can be quite handy while troubleshooting for the root cause of connection issues with SQL Azure. Also with little modification, this list can be translated into development standards for application interfaces to connect with SQL Azure.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Self service enterprise reporting solution for data warehouse powered by SSAS
One such solution is a product from Strategy Companion known as Analyzer. This reporting solution is said to be developed using ASP.NET and DHTML. Some of the features that I found pretty regular in line with what other such reporting products might offer are reporting using KPIs and indicators, drag-and-drop report creation, security integration with LDAP and Kerberos, different visualizations and gauges, integration with IE, SSRS, PPS, Sharepoint, Excel. But some of the features are quite impressive which any project would desire, and they are as follows:
1) Zero foot-print installation: Thin client is one of the most sought after requirements for any kind of enterprise wide client access. If you can facilitate your analytics requirement just using a browser, and still facilitate drag-and-drop report creation which for self-service report creation with rich report development features, it's very much favorable for any business.
2) Software as a Service solution: No business would want to invest straight away for a full fledged enterprise wide license, just based on an evaluation version, until and unless the product is a premiere class product listed in Gartner's report. Also small and medium businesses might want such reporting in an on-demand fashion. Analyzer provides the option for an SaaS deployment too.
3) Logic as a service: This is not a standard term, it's just my synonym for the term webservice. Analyzer features can also be used in the form of webservices, to embed reporting functionality in existing applications. This is a nice to have feature, but in my opinion, I would not recommend for this option. Instead there are better options than this, but still if you have deployed Analyzer for your enterprise wide BI reporting requirements, and some proprietary applications might be getting left out, this option can help in such cases.
4) Support for load-balancer / clusters: Analyzer can be deployed on IIS that is deployed on multiple servers and managed by a load balancer.