Silverlight based Business Intelligence using Infragistics Motion Framework

Data discovery is a branch of BI that is applied over strategic data i.e. long-term historic data. Visualization plays a very vital role in BI data representation to facilitate effortless data analysis. Silverlight based BI components and motion frameworks is the new trend gradually propagating in the MS BI world. Dundas Dashboards, Telerik Charting and Grid controls, Silverlight Toolkit from Microsoft etc are fine examples of Silverlight based components that can be used for BI reporting.

Before few years, the way bullet charts came as a new candidate for KPI reporting, motion graphics based data analysis is coming up as a new visualization for data discovery. When you have a set of attributes of an entity, and you want to analyze individual and group entities changing over a scale, typically time scale, motion graphics based analysis can be a very effective tool.

This statement may sound very confusing to interpret and digest, but can be better understood by this example. For ex, when you have a trend analysis report, you have the entire trend on a graph. If you want to study trend step by step, that is possible only in your mind but not on the graph on which trend is displayed. If you want to see trend step by step, you need to keep changing the scale of the graph and keep on increasing the same to study it step by step.

Studying trends using motion graphics solves this problem. Silverlight is a rich ingredient for an appealing user experience and to abstract lot of detail on the report, still making is available conveniently on demand. In my last experience, I remember Trend Compass having a motion graphics visualization. I also vaguely remember Telerik having a similar component in their charting controls. Now Infragistics is a new player coming up with a new rich motion framework, that sounds very appealing from the way it has been portrayed.

Infragistics has been a very popular name in the .NET world for the rich UI capabilities it offers with its frameworks. The new offering that I see from Infragistics in the context of BI is its Motion Framework. You can understand the use of this framework only from a demo, and one of the very intresting demos can be accessed from here. Over a slow internet connection it might take a little time than usual to load, but your patience would pay off by the way the experience of the demo would delight you.

I suggest to check out the following from the demo:

1) Click on the Play button on the top-left of the screen. This is the main highlight of what motion-framework offers, and what you can study from trends that change over time.

2) Hover your mouse on the colored world-map on the top-right in different colored sections, and see the effect on the upper chart. This map acts like a filter !!

3) Click on a few random countries in the bottom-right. It acts as parameters to the bottom chart.

4) Watch out the tooltip of the countries, and see the visual of the tooltip.

5) Watch out the tooltip of any of the country icon in the upper chart, which has numeric as well as graphical details.

There is much more to explore, and I leave the rest of the exploration to the delight of the readers.

Microsoft Silverlight 4 and Sharepoint 2010 Integration

Integration is one of the inevitable aspect in software development paradigm as well as in the scope of my regular work. A .NET application needs integration with OLTP, which in turn needs integration with relational data warehouse. SSAS or your cube development tool / technology needs integration with relational data warehouse, Dashboards needs integration with the Cube. Dashboards are deployed in Sharepoint and 2010 is the latest version of the same.

Now the question comes that where does Silverlight 4 fit in the picture and what does it have to do with MS BI. The answer is that Silverlight 4 does not significantly fit in the MS BI picture, but still it does graze the boundary of it. Sharepoint 2010 has got rich support of Silverlight, like Silverlight web part for example. Visio Services also uses Silverlight to show visio diagrams more interactively.

Now this is basically about a book that I have got, and I have presently the task of technically reviewing this book. I would be sharing this review very soon in a couple of days. I have gone thru the TOC, it has got 6 chapters which looks quite interesting to me. My .NET background basically helps me a lot to make sense of each and every chapter. If your job role is just of a developer and your responsibilities involves designing a report or developing a cube or writing stored procs or creating a package, this book is probably not for you. But in case if you intend to architect an end to end solution, silverlight is like garnishing and decorating the dish you are going to serve to your client. And we know that presentation is as important as is preparation, and as Sharepoint houses services like Performancepoint Services, Access Services, Excel Services, and Visio Services, I am sure that with all these dishes in the house, garnishing of Silverlight is a must in sooner or later future.

You can download a sample chapter of this book from here for free. In case if you want to know more about this book, you can check out the details of this book or buy this book, check it out here (from the packt website) where you have a greater probability of hunting some discount deals.

Update

Below is the review of this book:

1) This book would not be much helpful for Sharepoint and Silverlight beginners, but still Silverlight beginners would be comfortable using this book.

2) Book covers most the new ehancements introduced in Sharepoint 2010, where silverlight can play a role.

3) The best use of this book, would be to use it as a cookbook for developing RIA using Silverlight 4 on the Sharepoint 2010 platform.

4) If you have been developing RIAs for quite some time and want to add the Silverlight flavor to it, this book should be the first step in my views.

5) How to use this integration between Silverlight 4 and Sharepoint 2010 at various phases of SDLC is not explained in an elaborate manner.

Overall, in terms of Silverlight 4 and Sharepoint 2010 integration, I rate this book 6 / 10.

Silverlight Charts - Data visualization for SSRS

I have been always wanting since long, that Microsoft should come out with Silverlight based data visualization controls that can be used in Business Intelligence solutions. Products / Services like Performancepoint Services which are still found digesting the codebase of Proclarity, are not equipped with Silverlight based data visualizations. SSRS Team also bagged the license from Dundas to distribute and use Charts, Bars and data visualization of Dundas but still they do not have that silverlight magical touch. In my previous post about Trend Compass, I mentioned that this is a wonderful way of visualizing or analyzing data as Time can be literally used as a dimension of analysis by the end users instead of using it as a filter, and that too with animation.

Sometimes I happen to find that this BI world is too big and my knowledge is too small. Coming to why I feel so, the reason for the same is Silverlight Toolkit. This toolkit is available from Microsoft and I was completely unaware of one of the wonderful gems that has been developed jointly by SSRS Team and Silverlight team. This gem is known as Silverlight Chart Control which is a part of Silverlight toolkit. This control can be bound to data and has got a lot of functionality to explore, and if you have read my previous post, you would find that this control can cater what Trend Compass offers. A picture is worth thousand words, so watch the below effect that can be obtained from this control. I found this picture on a post of a blogger Tim Heuer.

So if you feel interested, jump on to download this toolkit and try out the use of this control in SSRS. I am also ready to get my hands on trying it's use in SSRS as soon as it get time of my regular work. If you want to check out demo of different controls available from this toolkit including the chart control, you can check out the same from here.

Dashboard Collection / Dashboard Gallery - Design idea for Silverlight based Dashboards

I was going through one of the posts by Marco Russo on SQLBlog.com where a shortcoming ( Excel Paste Picture Link feature ) of Excel Services was explained, but I found a very interesting link to a Dashboard gallery from his post. If you are looking out for a chart gallery or dashboards gallery, I suggest that this is the page you should definitely check out. These dashboards are made out of Excel and a custom component called Microcharts, but this gives an idea of different designs of dashboards which can be quite useful when planning for a performancepoint dashboard design layout.

Moreover these dashboards are created out of Excel, so for Microsoft Excel Business Users this should be no less important than a clip-art gallery, as this provides a spectrum of design insight for designing various kind of Excel Dashboards. Also if your are planning for developing your Analytical Reports by using Excel Services, you should be able to design major parts of your reports similar to the different dashboards that can be found on this gallery.

If such designs are created for Dasboards that are based on Silverlight, they would have the additional advantage of an interactive look and feel. I would wish that such dashboard templates should be made available in performancepoint dashboard designer which should be based on silverlight.

Silverlight Applications ( .XAP ) and Webpart in Sharepoint 2010 Video Tutorial and it's use in MS BI

Silverlight is one of the technologies that is being introduced slowly in all the Microsoft platforms, and Microsoft Business Intelligence is one of them. Though we do not have any applications or services in SQL Server that provide a special support for silverlight applications, but sharepoint 2010 has now got some great support for silverlight applications. Below are some of the facts that are good to keep in view for any business intelligence professional, as the same can help during the planning of any physical / technical design of your BI solution.

Firstly here is a great tutorial on Silverlight Application and Webpart in Sharepoint 2010, but BI folks who might not have any programming knowledge about .NET might not be able to understand a major part of it. Still they can go thru the summary that I have explained in the below points.

1) Silverlight Applications can be developed using Visual Studio 2010, which also has got interfaces to develop and deploy it over sharepoint.

2) Output of any Silverlight application would be a .XAP file, which can be thought of as a .EXE or .DLL file that comes out of any .NET based application.

3) Sharepoint 2010 has a separate webpart for Silverlight called the "Silverlight Webpart" under the "Media and Content" category. And this webpart just need to be provided with the URL of the .XAP file which can be hosted on Sharepoint 2010.

4) These Silverlight Webparts can also be customised or enhanced, to suit the needs of the solution. This can be thought of as a custom component which we can develop in SSIS using script and .NET.

5) With the latest version of Silverlight (version 4 I guess), we have the facility of installing and executing Silverlight out of the browser as a separate application, without the need of any browser.

Below is one of the example which shows how the above facts can be useful in your BI solution planning:

Dundas Dashboards and Telerix Dashboards are providers of Silverlight based dashboarding solutions. Let's take example of Dundas Dashboards. Dundas Dashboard Viewer is a silverlight application, which can be thought of similar to a report viewer control that is available with any .NET application. Now this application is a .XAP file, and this can be programmed to view any Dashboard components or application developed using Dundas Dashboards. Host this .XAP file in a Silverlight Webpart in Sharepoint 2010. When this webpart is made available to any page on Sharepoint, this would make the entire dashboard available to any user.

By the above explanation, the point that I intend to make is that though BI folks would not take much interest into Sharepoint 2010 or Silverlight, it's better to keep information about components that we require to integrate parts of our BI solution into sharepoint.

Considerations for opting Dundas Dashboards against Performancepoint

Recently I got a query from one of my blog reader which is the topic of this post. I thought of posting it on this blog, for the review from a greater audience. Below are my 1st level thoughts on the same. Feel free to correct me on the same, as these are just my views and not verified facts.

1) Developer expertise with dundas object model is a big concern and blocking factor in speedy and efficient development. Your team would be able to make it but cannot guarantee efficient development and in case of an issue, it would always be a debate whether it's a limitation with product or developer bug.

2) Most of the visual components are based on Silverlight, and scripting would require development team to learn object model for the same.

3) SSRS already has got now Dundas chars and graphs, so just dashboard part of it makes sense for use.

4) Performance impact - You need to develop a few POCs to make out if these components dump out lot of html or huge images like what Infragistics does. Should not be the case as Silverlight is supposed to be a thin client support, but still its a question.

5) If these are planned to be shared over a tool like Sharepoint for collaboration, these components would be treated as just another ActiveX components. Also if you plan to use sharepoint, PPS is already a part of sharepoint 2010.

6) I cannot comment from a pricing point of view, but Dundas Dashboards would come more economic than Sharepoint 2010. Also both cannot be compared as both are totally different areas, and PPS cannot be extracted out from Sharepoint 2010 though this may be your only requirement.

Dundas may definitely win over pricing, but over a technical tug-of-war, the same cannot be guaranteed.

Business Dashboard Design and Presentation with Microsoft Business Intelligence and Silverlight

Often, most of the BI folks invest entire energy, focus and time on topics like architecture, performance and design and by no means I would try to negate this theory. By all means, it's very vital for any project. Still one thing that I personally feel lacks in the overall process is emphasis on presentation.

It has been my seen and heard experience that, even if the performance of a data warehouse is a bit on the lower end (for ex. 7% to 10% less than expected), a nice presentation of the dashboard can really take off all the pain that the users would feel due to such issues. I am not trying to making a point that how this can be used as an excuse for performance, but I am trying to emphasize the point that presentation is a very very vital part of the overall project delivery, which even applies to a data warehousing project where Dashboard is a part of the delivery.

To the best of my knowledge, with the kind of charts, bars and graphs available with Performancepoint Services now, it has evolved much better from what it was in the earlier version. But personally, I do not feel that it's to the best of my satisfaction or I can say that Silverlight based Dashboards has started overwhelming me. After Dundas Dashboards which I described in an earlier post few weeks back, there is another example of Silverlight based dashboard. And this one too definitely looks spectacular.

The example which I am going to describe uses something called "RadControls for Silverlight". These controls use Silverlight and the visualizations are quite impressive. These comes from a company called Telerik Corporation, which seems like a components and controls provider firm for DotNet based applications. The example which I am talking about is called Sales Dashboard Demo and a whitepaper is also available on the same.

Thou this controls are not designed to work directly with any data warehouse or technologies like a cube and KPIs, but it should be definitely possible to use these controls where a dashboard is created using SSRS. In my opinion, in the next release or service-pack, Microsoft should come up with some Silverlight based user-interface controls that can be used in the dashboarding side of Business Intelligence. Whether this happens or not, Silverlight is already getting popular as an interactive and intelligent user interface rendering mechanism.

Data Analysis using Data Mining and Microsoft Silverlight

I posted my first post of this year on the topic of which all technologies would be the focus of this year that would affect Microsoft Business Intelligence. One of those that I listed was Silverlight Applications that would integrate with MS BI Deliverables, and mostly they integarte with the reporting and/or dashboarding modules.

While browsing the web, I stumbled upon a very interesting web based service that provides data mining analysis capabilities, and the visualizations are too good to believe. The interesting point here is these visualizations are developed using Microsoft Silverlight. As I stated in my earlier posts that we have not yet seen a bright out-of-the-box silverlight based tools packaged with microsoft business intelligence stack, but independent vendors have already started finding an excellent use of these technologies.

The only downside of this service is that it provides analysis only over the web in the form of a web service. And one would not want to sent out an entire data warehouse over the web or analyze data of these volume using a web service. Check out yourself these fantastic product which is called Data Applied and below is one it's fantastic visualizations.

Dundas Dashboards , Silverlight and Microsoft Business Intelligence

Silverlight is a term that has slowly become or is becoming quite integral part of .Net development world. But when it comes to Microsoft Business Intelligence world, it might seems to be a unknown rock on the BI landscape. But the fact is that Silverlight has already started making it's space slowly in the Business Intelligence arena.

Thou Microsoft has not directly come out with any product that integrates into the MS BI or its related stack of technologies, but 3rd party vendors have already started exploring the potential of visualization capability of Silverlight. Also to extend the reach of Silverlight content, Microsoft partnered with Novell and created Moonlight which is a plugin that can facilitate Linux users to access Silverlight content.

In June 2007, Dundas announced that it has licensed Microsoft for the usage of its source code for a part of Dundas Advanced Visualizations which included Dundas Charts and Dundas Gauge. And we saw a really professional set of charting and visualization capabilities in SSRS 2008. The first step in the share of Silverlight on the landscape of MS BI is on the delivery end of a BI solution i.e. Dashboarding and it has been developed by Dundas in the form of Dundas Dashboards developed using Silverlight. It's Dashboard visualizations are very impressive and in my viewpoint, it definitely has the potential to outperform the visualization capabilities of Performancepoint Server 2007. Thou Performancepoint Services for Sharepoint has now improvised in this area and seems like now it has digested the codebase of Proclarity to a better extent, but still in my views, the visualizations provided by Dundas Dashboards are quite competitive.

I am not sure about the pricing policies, and how well it integrates with the MS BI solution deck. But considering the history of integration of Dundas with Microsoft set of technologies, and its established milestone achievement in SSRS, it's would not be a wonder if we see Dundas Dashboards in the Dashboarding deck of MS BI Solution as a part of Performancepoint visualizations.

A full evaluation version of Dundas Dashboards can be downloaded from here. And to the best of my knowledge, after the evaluation expires, the components don't stop working but would start showing up a watermarked image in the background of the visualizations. Still check it out yourself.