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.

Sharepoint 2010 with limited features on the cloud without BI support = Sharepoint 2010 Online

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) is a collection of products that are available on the cloud. These products are Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Office Livemeeting and Office Communications Online. These products / services are available in Standard and Dedicated edition. Standard version is a shared services platform and Dedicated edition provides an isolated and dedicated server space in the cloud. Microsoft has made office web apps available for free usage on sky drive, and during the later part of this year, office web apps is also expected to be available on the cloud. This is a complete SaaS offering from Microsoft.

Being a MS BI professional, my interest goes specially in Sharepoint online. Presently it's based on Sharepoint 2007 platform, so it can be easily interpreted that it won't have features like Access Services and Performancepoint Services. During the later half of this year, Sharepoint online is going to be upgraded on Sharepoint 2010 platform. This immediately raises a curiosity in my mind, whether Performancepoint Services and Access Services would be made available in this version. Microsoft has though not officially confirmed anything (to the best of my knowledge), but several Microsoft as well as unofficial sources have confirmed that performancepoint services is definitely not going to be a part of Sharepoint 2010 online. This means an end to the scope of dashboard development and hosting on the cloud.

Access Services may or may not be made available on Sharepoint 2010 online. One interesting feature of Access Services is Web databases. If Access services and effectively creation of web databases on the cloud is made available in sharepoint 2010 online, this can be seen as one of the competition / alternative to SQL Azure. My mind raises a question that when I have capabilities of sharepoint 2010 (though limited) available in the cloud, with web databases facilitated through access services, how many chances are there that I would opt Windows Azure storage and SQL Azure against Sharepoint 2010 online ? In fact, news are that Sharepoint 2010 online might be made available on Azure platform.

In short, Sharepoint 2010 online diminishes the hope and scope of BI by eliminating performancepoint services. Those who are curious to learn more about Sharepoint online can download Microsoft Sharepoint Online Standard Developer Guide. Though it's quite old and there can be changes in the present offerings, but still it would provide a deep insight into Sharepoint Online features.

Data Warehouse as a Service (DaaS) in MS BI Stack

Fast track data warehouse architecture and parallel data warehouse are two entirely different kinds of solutions but targeting a common domain of data warehousing. As SaaS solution is not available in MS BI Stack, similarly DaaS solution is also not available in MS BI Stack. If these kind of solutions are made available on private cloud solutions like Windows Azure Appliance Solution, a DaaS kind of offering can be made available on Microsoft platform. I am not sure if this would be of interest to Microsoft, but in my views, this is definitely of interest to solution provider kind of organizations. I feel that combining Azure and MS BI Stack, Microsoft has all the raw material that is required to develop SaaS or DaaS solutions, but the integration part is missing.

One of the leaders in DaaS solution is Kognitio. Enterprises are looking for on-demand services, and Azure can be seen as the first step in this direction. And whether it's for self-service business intelligence or data warehousing, there is a huge market for each of these solutions and microsoft is eagerly awaited to make entry into these (SaaS and/or DaaS) markets. Integrating MS BI on cloud would not be simple, and again making the same available in the form of service would change the existing MS BI markets. Not only that, solution providers would also have to adapt to this change, and look at a completely Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solution proposition.

Below is an excerpt from Kognitio DaaS page, to which I fully agree.

• DaaS solves several issues that are common within the data analytics industry. Most notably, the inability to prove business value from data warehousing and analytics projects before spending large capital sums of money.


• DaaS allows you to run your large-scale data analytics projects (marketing campaigns, business reporting etc) and you simply pay on a pay-per-use basis. There is no overhead of implementing a data warehouse onsite, there is no need for your IT department to service, maintain and support the database and its users.

More about Kognitio and the services offered by this company can be read from here.

Spatial Data Resources

Spatial data is one of the valued enhancements since SQL Server 2008. SSMS has also been enhanced to support viewing of spatial data. But still there are limitations on how you create spatial data, and generating Well Known Text (WKT) is something that can be done only visually. Visual tools are needed, using which one can draw shapes or plot points / shapes on locations and the WKT should get generated. For viewing WKT one can also use the spatial results tab in SSMS.

Two of the most useful resources for generating WKT by visually generating or pointing shapes for spatial or geospatial data are Mike Ormond's SQL Server 2008 Geospatial Data Generator and the newly released Spatial Viewer utility on codeplex by Simon Sabin. This spatial viewer is a C# application that is intended to create WKT out of the drawn shapes and vice-versa too. I have not tried this application, but this is definitely a valued utility. If this can be made to integrate in SSMS, it would serve as one of the most valued application as of now for spatial data support in SSMS.

Image Courtesy: Simon Sabin's Blog

What is Business Intelligence ( or Microsoft Business Intelligence ) and are you a BI professional ?

Database professionals many a times feel the dilemma in the classification of the work they do. I even find many professionals literally bragging that they are BI professionals and they would want to work only in BI and nothing else. Many a times as an interviewer when I check the candidate's profile, it seems that the candidate has developed a couple of SSIS packages for import-export kind of requirements, and so he has the medal on his chest of being a BI professional. I would think that SSIS is still somewhat elegant, some even argue that they have been developing SSRS reports since a while and so they are BI professionals. That sounds like a more interesting argument, doesn't it ? Some even say that they don't know T-SQL development and they work exclusively in SSIS. I think this is the biggest blunder statement that I have ever heard in SSIS business.

Below are a few questions that my mind raises when one claims of being a BI professional.

1) Are you aware of Data Warehousing concepts ?

2) Working with SSIS / SSRS makes or running a wizard to create a Cube makes you a BI professional or is there more weight in your justification ?

3) Are you aware of ETL strategy, design and development concepts ?

4) How many data warehousing or analytics projects have you executed in your career ?

5) How many dashboards have you designed to facilitate decision support as a part of any business solution ?

6) What tangible / measurable value did your BI solution bring to the business, and what was your contribution in the solution development and design ?

7) What you have been doing with SSIS, is that something that can't be done using T-SQL, provided I take out the factors of automation and ease of maintenance ?

8) How many competitive BI tools and technologies are you aware of and how many of them have you technically evaluated ?

9) Have you used SSIS just in data migration projects or you have used SSIS to populate a data warehouse and process cubes ?

10) How good are you are gathering requirements, analyze data at hand and able to foresee a way to extract patterns or intelligence out of it ?

If after the above questions, your answer still stands to "I work in SSIS / SSRS / SSAS so I am a Business Intelligence professional", I would say "All that glitters is not gold, and all who work on SSIS / SSRS / SSAS are not BI professionals". Thoughts are welcome !!