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.

Performance of Kimball Method Slowly Changing Dimension Component v1.5

I just read a post by Todd McDermid on Kimball Method Slowly Changing Dimension v1.5 release. Todd gives a very nice explanation on the internals of how this components works. Theoretically the performance is claimed to be 100 times faster than SCD, and the reason I feel is a particular design choice made for this component. I would not summarize all or any of the features of this new version of this component, as I cannot do a better job than what Todd has done on his post, but my interest is surrounding this design choice.

After reading this post, I was able to realize that this component uses Cached Lookup kind of implementation internally, and this makes this component performing like a bullet, but also a fat memory eater. So theoretically, in case if it's executed on a data warehouse or ETL server where other simultaneous ETL operations are working in parallel, one can expect a sudden low in memory if this component starts processing a huge SCD. I by no mean intend to point that one should not use this component, but the point I am trying to make is it should be used with a little caution. It's like you are boarding a super sonic carrier and reaching the space is guaranteed to be faster than any regular aircraft, but be ready to bear huge fuel tank and thrust for the minute till it reaches there.

Considering all the advantages it brings to the table compared to regular SSIS SCD component, and considering the standard RAM size that I have mostly seen on ETL Servers (8 GB normally), this component is a must-go selection. Read the entire post of Todd to understand various features of this component along with a video tutorial on the same.

Excel on browser ( Excel Web App ), Powerpivot and Sharepoint

I was reading Andrew Fryer's Blog on a post regarding Powerpivot management and the first sentence said that "The most important thing about PowerPivot is the ability to share users analysis into SharePoint so that these other users can slice and data form within a browser."

For those who are not aware, Microsoft Office 2010 has come out with a new neat feature that can be thought of as a NANO version of Microsoft Sharepoint, but it brings to the table a very important functionality. This application is called Excel Web App and is a light-weight Excel client that allows to collaborate working on excel workbooks more or less like Sharepoint using a browser. Keep in view, that multiple users can work together on it, but it should not go under assumption that it would have all features that are available while working on worksheets that are hosted on Sharepoint. Obviously, it won't have those features as they are not Excel but Sharepoint features.

The point that I am trying to make is that, if Powerpivot can be used in conjunction with Excel Web App, need of Sharepoint can reduced helping small scale organizations to still have the minimal required features like simultaneous collaboration and analysis capability of Powerpivot. I don't think powerpivot is supported from this application as of this draft, as I read on the Excel Webapp overview post comments that "Excel Web App cannot run add-ins built for the Excel client app". Thru the course of evolution or thru some workaround, it can be effectively used to replace Sharepoint if just collaboration of Excel worksheets is the most used feature on Sharepoint for your organization which would reduce huge costs.

I am NO expert at Excel Web App but having worked with Excel Services on Sharepoint Server and having read the post on Excel Web App overview (do not miss reading the comments on this post) and this post on Collaborative editing using Excel Web app from Excel Team, I am very sure of the point that I am trying to make is possible and a practitioner or Excel team can confirm the same. I am happy to learn if there's anyone out there who have got different views on the same. I have posted question on the same to Excel Team, do check out the Excel Web App overview post for the answer from Excel Team.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Editions

SQL Server 2008 R2 has come out with some of the unique editions, which has not been seen historically. The major categories of these editions are DataCenter Edition, Parallel Data warehouse, Enterprise Edition and the Standard and below versions.

DataCenter the name itself implies what would be the probable use of this edition. Parallel Data warehouse is an interesting edition which is called an appliance-based solution i.e. in simple terms you need to buy hardware along with this version. I discussed in my previous post about this concept. Pricing of both these editions seems to be very similar, in fact its $57,498 for both of these editions for per processor quote which can be read from this page.

One other interesting difference between Enterprise and Standard edition is that Master Data Services and Powerpivot for Sharepoint would be available only in Enterprise edition and not Standard Edition. On the top of it, Master Data Services would work only on 64-bit editions. Also Sharepoint Server 2010 would work only on 64-bit hardware and architecture. In summary if one carefully thinks, it's better to use 64-bit hardware and OS architecture if you are planning to buy Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2008 R2 as most of the features that it offers are available only on 64-bit architecture and not x86.

To get a higher level view of the differences, read this datasheet which gives a clear idea of the same.

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.