 siddhumehta
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Preview: Siddharth Mehta's Blog
Siddharth Mehta's BlogThis blog is home to share my experiences, views, learning and findings on SQL Server 2005 & SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Business Intelligence - SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, Performancepoint, MDX and Proclarity. Feel free to contact me @ siddhumehta_brain@yahoo.co.inUpdated: 2010-02-09T11:14:59.217-08:00
Download SQL Server 2008 R2 Videos , Tutorials , Presentations , Demos and Labs 2010-02-08T11:41:08.719-08:00 SQL Server 2008 R2 is one of the most important milestone release in the BI history of SQL Server. It brings also with it, new feature/release like Master Data Services , StreamInsight, Powerpivot and some very interesting and useful enhancements to Reporting Services. Many of us do pay for training on the new content, and hunt for information in the form of videos, tutorial and guides. Microsoft has made this easy for us to learn the new features of R2 release, by providing a SQL Server 2008 R2 Update for Developer Training Kit. This kit is full of resources you need for learning almost all the new features of R2 release as well as SQL Server 2008 also. Start learning and get ready for R2 from this kit, as R2 official release is going to hit the market in May 2010. Make your CV and yourself R2 ready, and use this kit as an exercising platform for the same. 
Download Free SSMS Add-in to search for any text within your database objects 2010-02-02T16:01:29.388-08:00 I am a collector and admirer of free add-ins and I have been a admirer of SSMS Tools Pack. But after that, there are not many great add-ins available for SSMS. A handy-search is always a nice feature to have in any development environment, and even this holds true for database objects too. SSMS Tools pack provides great features for search within the results returned by your query. But if you want to search for any particular text within your database objects, it required developing some form of scripts to query some sys tables. Redgate software has come out with a FREE SSMS ADD-IN the is very simple to use, very efficient in text search across the database server. It has a very nice GUI, much more granularity and details that what you get in SSMS search and the it's of a pretty small size (less than 3 MB) download. I would say that this is the next best SSMS freeware utility that I have seen after SSMS Tools Pack. This add-in in called SQL Search and it's still in Beta, but final version is expected to just add some more details on the help feature, thou I don't think any help is required to learn on how to use this add-in. Download it and make your life more easy with your database development. The only feature missing in this add-in that I would wish to have, is the ability to save this search or export the results of this search to Excel. At least it should allow to select the results from this search and copy it out. Presently it just allows to select one row at a time, so if one wants to select all the results and copy it to Excel to create an Excel report out of it, it's not possible.
Download Video Tutorial or Webcast on Performancepoint Services , Excel Services , REST API , Powerpivot , Sharepoint Business Intelligence 2010-02-01T16:31:06.113-08:00 Any IT product that is used by masses cannot work in isolation, and arguably, same holds to true for SQL Server also. Sharepoint as per my opinion, is one of the biggest delivery partners for the Business Intelligence features that come out of the SQL Server MS BI stack of technologies. Sharepoint has more often been seen (in the group of people I know) as a tool for collaboration when seen from the perspective of a database or in fact a MS BI developer. Apart from being used as a collaboration platform, Sharepoint has come down a long way into the arena of Business Intelligence. The key Business Intelligence features that are now unique to Sharepoint, which even SQL Server needs to complete the eco-system of any Business Intelligence project are Performancepoint Services, Excel Services, Visio Services which facilitate Strategy Maps, web parts that hosts SSRS and Excel Analytical Reports, and Powerpivot. There is a lot to know and learn in Sharepoint 2010 Business Intelligence Features. How about a book that gives a higher level overview with a demo ? It might seem boring to SQL Server folks. But how about a video tutorial or webcast that takes you on a guided tour of all of these along with a demo, which is also available free of download !!! Yes, I am not kidding. This is a session presented by Mike Fitzmaurice, and this video is available for download from Channel9. So download this video tutorial / webcast (whatever you call it) and get going on a Sharepoint Server 2010 Business Intelligence Overview. Be advised that this download is over 1 GB and contains over 1 Hr of video training. I recommend it as a must-watch video for MS BI folks. 
Business Dashboard Design and Presentation with Microsoft Business Intelligence and Silverlight 2010-01-27T16:06:28.724-08:00 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 2010-01-25T16:41:41.024-08:00 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 2010-01-22T14:09:22.953-08:00 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 2010-01-17T17:53:20.544-08:00 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 2010-01-27T15:59:40.018-08:00 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.  
SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse ( formerly known as project Madison ) 2010-01-17T17:54:19.150-08:00 SQL Server 2008 R2 would be released in different flavor never heard before, and it is called SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse which was earlier known as Project Madison. This flavor of SQL Server 2008 is unique and first one of its kind. Some of the points that make it unique are as follows:1) This version of SQL Server can't be bought as an independent piece of software, it has to be bought along with the hardware.2) Hardware would generally consist of one controller node, and rest of the compute nodes (3 minimum). This controller node would manage requests and route it to compute nodes. Also the licensing for installation of SQL Server on each node is on a per CPU basis, which means that minimum 4 licenses would have to be procured.3) To the best of my knowledge, I read somewhere that SQL Server 2008 Parallel Data warehouse edition would cost above $57,000, so consider the price of the same for minimum 3 compute node CPUs. Also the rest of the software and integration and controlling would cost extra. Add to this the installation and consulting fees that one needs to house for maintaining this setup.Clustering brings concurrency to the system and reduces load, but it can't reduce the time that a single query would take without any resource latency. To break this barrier, parallelism would be required to execute bits of the same request simultaneously and this is what exactly this setup would bring to the table. SQL Server can also run queries in parallel, but in a data warehouse it would be interesting to see how parallelism is being brought, and claims are that queries that takes hours would come down to as low as minutes. Massive Parallel Processing is claimed to be obtained thru this implementation, and the architecture would be hub-and-spoke.By partnering with vendors like HP and IBM who are some of the leading runners in providing hardware required for different kinds of data warehouse setups, Microsoft has created a unique kind of sales package leveraging business for themselves and it's partners. This idea can be used even by solution providers organizations by partnering with local or international hardware vendors, and coming out with a sales package that incorporates end-to-end data warehouse development in addition to specialized hardware setup as a single package. Fast Track Data warehouse is a nice start up architecture where solution providers can make a start for a similar package offering.More information on this setup can be read from this data sheet.[...]
What is Microsoft Codename Dallas and how is it associated with Microsoft Business Intelligence ? 2010-01-04T17:05:42.129-08:00 I would term Dallas as a new potential Amazon.com in the making for content-as-a-service on the cloud computing platform. Here is how one should try out a hands-on experience on Dallas. Before planning or expecting anything from this platform, keep in view it is still in alpha phase and not even in betas. So just expect to get a feel of what it is going to offer, and not a full-fledged working product.Firstly, in order to get access to Dallas, one needs to get access the Dallas Developer Portal. It's still not in the phase of open-for-all where anyone can sign up and get access. As of now, we can get access to Dallas as on invitation basis. Go to this portal, request your invitation code (its just a matter of dropping an email with a request to receive invitation code). Generally one should receive the invitation code on the very next day.Log on to this portal, and you would be provided your account key. Save this key securely at some place, though this would remain available to you on your account home page on this potal. This key is important as this would be used as a kind of GUID for billing and reporting. The question that comes now is billing what and report what ? This is the next part of Dallas.As per what I understand and anticipate is that, Dallas would offer content in the form of structured datasets from a lot of content providers in the form of a service. These content providers would be business houses, who would provide respective content which can be images, text or any blob kind of data to their subscribers. Using Dallas, one can subscribe to their service of choice.Presently this portal provides a "Catalog" tab which shows a list of service providers to which we can subscribe. Subscription is free for the trial period. After you have subscribed, there is another tab called "Subscriptions" where you would be able to find your subscriptions. Under each subscription, you would be able to find a link that says "Click here to explore the dataset". Once you click on it, you would be able taken to Service Explorer page where it provides a set of parameters to specify your criteria and a few action buttons to view the data. This can be thought of much like a accessing or testing an invoked web-service. You can preview the data, as well as download it to analyze with powerpivot (provided if it's installed on your machine). The dataset that this service provider would return, would be limited to 100 records which is limit set for the trial. One nice thing is that it offers the service class readily to download to that service, so developers can just add a reference to it in their applications and business can start accessing it in their own hosted environment.The last tab on this portal is the "Access Report" tab. On this tab you can view the reports of how many times you accessed each subscription service. And to the best of my thinking, you would be charged as per the usage of each subscription. I have not learned much about the pricing policy, so can't comment really much about it.Finally it comes to how this can be used for Business Intelligence. Business Analysts keep of accessing and aggregating data from different sources, and most of the premium content providers charge a fees for the subscription. One of the best examples is in the Equity Research Business, where data from a lot of sources is studied for each equity. The same concept can be used here but it should be pay-as-per-use in my understanding. Using the cloud platform, applications and data storage can all be hosted and stored on the cloud instead of investing IT resources for the same. And using tools like powerpivot, data from various different business sources can be aggregated and analyzed without investing major IT resources for the same.Still this does not eliminate the need of IT technology worker[...]
Microsoft Codename Dallas and Powerpivot 2010-01-03T15:51:18.248-08:00 When powerpivot was introduced, the power of analytics that it brought to Excel and Sharepoint hosted content was spectacular. The point where I didn't feel something in place was, what would powerpivot analyze and when analytics is generally facilitated for MIS systems right out of data warehouse and cubes, would powerpivot really come to that much use for the business analysts keeping the flag of Self-Service BI still waving ? One of the interesting use of powerpivot came to my attention when I saw use of powerpivot with Microsoft Codename Dallas. Dallas is still in the alpha version, and seems to be an interesting concept. It can be thought of as a potential new tiny Amazon.com in the market place of service subscription business. Any business that is providing it's content in the form of service can partner with Microsoft and take advantage of the Microsoft's sales channel. Microsoft would provide these services via Dallas, which users can subscribe by paying for the required subscriptions. Content from these services would be made available in a structured format (like in the form of a dataset or in Excel) to the subscribers. This content can then by readily analyzed using Powerpivot. This is a very interesting part of cloud computing, and powerpivot comes to its most appropriate use for business intelligence, in my views. Powerpivot of course is a very powerful mechanism to analyze huge data in a way that was not possible just using excel, but that felt much more like an add-on to me instead of real time business intelligence. But now when data from Dallas can be analyzed by joining with other sources of data using powerpivot, this is what I feel is real business intelligence. 
Emerging technologies that would affect Microsoft Business Intelligence in 2010 2010-01-02T07:59:49.314-08:00 It is new year and I thought today I would publish my first post of the year. I have been working on SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP these days and there are a lot of new technologies evolving which would also affect MB BI. Also from a professional point of view, it would be worth watching out as a good knowhow of these technologies can definitely add weight to your CV. As per my views, below is a list of technologies that would be worth watching out for 2010: 2) Performancepoint Services for Sharepoint 3) SQL Azure and Cloud Computing 4) Excel Services & REST API in Sharepoint Server 2010 5) Powerpivot for Excel and Sharepoint 6) Silverlight applications that can be integrated with MS BI deliverables 
Microsoft Business Intelligence ( SSIS / SSAS / SSRS ) Architecture Videos 2009-12-22T04:43:13.516-08:00 There are a few interesting videos available on The Architecture Journal on MS BI Architecture Design and Implementation which includes topics like Planning for a Microsoft Business Intelligence ( MS BI ) Project and Service Oriented Architecture ( SOA ). Check it out ! 
Dundas Dashboards , Silverlight and Microsoft Business Intelligence 2010-01-27T15:59:40.019-08:00 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. 
Pivoting and Business Intelligence 2009-12-09T16:09:39.122-08:00 The term "Pivot" just used to be perceived as a small functionality before a couple of years. Over the period of time, it is quite amazing to see how this term has took so much importance in the industry. Pivoting has made it's journey over the period of time that can evidently be seen in smaller steps. Firstly, it used to be mostly limited to pivot tables that used to exist in Excel. This slowly became one of the key functionality that addicted business users with Microsoft Excel. Office Web Component (OWC) which also contained this functionality, became very popular and started to make it's place in stand-alone and distributed applications. Sensing the need for the same in database development, Microsoft introduced PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators in T-SQL with SQL Server 2005. This made queries much easier for developers, which used be a lengthy and complex piece of code used to creating resultsets that were typically consumed by some cross-tab reports. SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 (SSAS) cube browsing also got facilitated by using OWC. Sensing a feature/characteristic of pivoting to aggregate huge information, project Gemini was started which finally resulted into what we know today as PowerPivot. It can aggregate i.e. pivot and analyse huge data from a variety of sources using engine of SSAS and interface of Microsoft Excel and looks very promising with its charting and analysis capabilities. Also it seems like Microsoft plans to go big in this direction, as Microsoft has set up a dedicated lab kind of research setup for pivoting known as Microsoft Livelabs Pivot. Importance of pivoting is not just recognized by Microsoft, but other industry vendors are also making their move in this direction to get their slice of business. Infragistics has announced release of their Silverlight Data Visualization CTP which consits of two basic controls : OLAP Pivot Grid and Data Chart. OLAP Pivot Grid fetches data from analysis services using ADOMD and visualizations generated by it can be compared to that of Dundas Charts and others. It seems like Pivoting is turning out to be new big business arena that has not been exploited to the best of its potential. 
XML AUTO option vs Tabular Data Stream ( TDS ) in SQL Server 2009-12-01T15:49:25.143-08:00 Comparative study is one of the best ways to benchmark, compare and conclude right option for the right job. I came across an interesting comparative study of size of data that gets created by results returned thru TDS compared to size of data that gets created by FOR XML AUTO option for the same piece of data. Even to my surprise, there is a huge difference between the two options when this size of data is to be accessed over the network. So when you expect huge resultsets to be returned, you might want to think twice by looking at the results in the below image (Image courtesy: SQLServerPedia.com). It's not that XML option is not good, it has it's own place and set of requirements that it caters. But while designing your architecture, this piece of comparative study is worth considering and it can also prove helpful to carry out a Proof-Of-Concept ( POC ) before considering this option in your low-level designs.
Original article can be read from here. 
My first article on SQLServerCentral.com - Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit 2009-11-23T23:08:05.175-08:00 Today on 24-Nov0-2009, my first article has been published on SQLServerCentral.com. And I feel extremely happy and excited about this. Many a times I get confronted by an expectation that I need to push my team towards delivery through technical expertise, by empowering them with whatever they need and thus decreasing time to delivery which can result into increased revenues. It's not always that one himself / herself needs to be a super expert. Knowledge is always power and there's no doubt in it, but when you work in a team, you can't expect each and every team member having same level of expertise and the same speed of execution of development. So remaining within the boundaries of costs, as a team lead one needs to educate as well as facilitate oneself and team with tools and stuff that can boost up the development process and reduce time in tackling known challenges. Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit is my first attempt to share my experiences about a basic set of tools and documents / documenting methods which I term as "Booster Kit" that can help any development team with stuff they can use in their day to day work to help them gear their project faster directly / indirectly in the shorter / longer term at one / another phase of the project life-cycle. If you came across my blog through my article on SQLServerCentral.com, please feel free to drop your valuable feedback a comment on this post. Also feel free to reach out to me on siddhumehta_brain@yahoo.co.in. 
Powerpivot Books , Training , and Installation 2009-11-19T07:19:30.947-08:00 Powerpivot resources are now out and available for public download. The long awaited learning material on Powerpivot is now available online on BOL, and can be accessed from here. Download instructions and links to download locations for different flavours of Powerpivot can be accessed from here. Those who are not able to download and install Powerpivot (as it also requires installation of Office 2010 beta in one or another way), need not to get disappointed. A Virtual Lab of Powerpivot for Excel 2010 Introduction is available from Microsoft. Aspirants can use this lab, and get their hands-on this lab to get the feel of Powerpivot without bothering about any download or installation. This Virtual Lab can be accessed from here. 
Microsoft Business Intelligence ( MS BI ) products on 64 bit / x64 2009-11-18T16:30:56.627-08:00 Today all the 2010 version of products got released, and made available for public download. If you carefully study the preliminary requirements of the new line of products, most of them are shifting towards the primary requirement of 64-bit. Let's start one-by-one. Sharepoint Server 2010 contains Performancepoint Services for Sharepoint, which is the performance measurement or dashboarding solution candidate from Microsoft. Also I anticipate that it will also contain Powerpivot Services for Sharepoint (PSS). Sharepoint Server 2010 has the below mentioned preliminary requirements:
From the above set of requirements it's very easy to make out that if one wants to have Performancepoint Services and/or Powerpivot Services for Sharepoint or even just Sharepoint Server 2010 for hosting of it's dashboarding solution, the entire landscape of Microsoft BI line of products used in the solution including the Operating Systems needs to be 64-bit. Also the hardware needs to be 64-bit compliant. If the above is not enough, there's still more left. I recently came to know from one of the threads on SSIS forum that Master Data Services, which is Microsoft's new offering in SQL Server 2008 R2 (and is expected to be released in the coming quarter) for Master Data Management is going to be 64-bit only. So for aspirants who are keen on getting their hands-on the new products are left with fewer options to try out all these new features, as most of us do not have 64-bit operating systems or hardware within our accessibility. The only hope is that, if Microsoft releases a new Microsoft Business Intelligence VPC that comes loaded with all these softwares, like the previous ones. 
Powerpivot Data Analysis Expression ( DAX ) Functions PDF 2009-11-13T07:04:36.430-08:00 Data Analysis Expressions ( DAX ) is the new query language or expression language of Powerpivot. It also has a rich set of functions which are almost similar to Excel functions. A dictionary of all the DAX functions are available for download from PowerPivot-info.com. Most of the functions sound very similar to Excel, except the Time-Intelligence functions. The functions listed in the Time-Intelligence section looks very much aligned towards the structure and usage that we find in the Date / Time dimension. I wonder why all this information is not available on MSDN yet, or at least I am not able to locate down on MSDN. 
Powerpivot Client Architecture 2009-11-12T15:41:45.741-08:00 With Powerpivot now available to users, more information about architecture and theory revolving it is emerging out slowly on Blogosphere. I recently went thru an article where the author has posted about the client side of powerpivot, which is the powerpivot add-in. Below is the summary of what I was able to extract out of the article, that I felt of interest:
Use this link to read the original article. 
How to generate SSRS Report output by programming using SSIS or .NET 2009-11-11T15:41:36.963-08:00 A new SSIS Task is available on codeplex, named SSIS ReportGenerator Task. As described on it's homepage, the description about this task is : "SSIS Task for SQL Server 2008 to create Reports from a recordset data source." This task wraps a nice functionality of generating report output behind the scenes, without requiring any programming knowledge for the same. It has a nice User Interface available, with option to view the report during task execution. All the options are self-relevant and the author has provided a nice example of how to use the task on the home page. The technique employed by this task to generate report output is quite common in the .NET programming arena. Report Server Web Service endpoints are used for managing objects on the report server and execution of reports using reporting service. ReportService2005 / ReportService2006 Endpoint is used for managing objects on the report server, and ReportExecution2005 Endpoint is used for execution of reports. This component collects all the data from the options selected by the user, and sets it's properties. Value of these properties are in turn passed on to the object of ReportService2005 Endpoint. Finally this object is passed as a parameter to ReportExecution2005 Endpoint and the report is generated programatically using the WebService. Those who are novice to the concept of webservice and end-points in the context of reporting services, start from this link to learn about the same. After the same, the next step can be to learn more about Report Server Web Service end-points and how to create a client for the same. Finally once you master the same, the source code of this task is the final lesson to learn the best way to implement it. The source code of this task is available for download on codeplex. 
Free Tool to synchronize files and folders 2009-11-11T04:50:14.951-08:00 SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations. Typical uses include sharing files, with other computers and creating backup copies of files and folders. In project environments, where data feeds are received in the form of files, in a development environment such tools are quite helpful. Also for general content management, having one such tool which is also FREE is a big boon. Below in an excerpt from the download page: In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality. Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder. 
New Features in Performancepoint Services 2010 , Difference between Performancepoint Server 2007 and Performancepoint Services 2010 2009-11-09T09:35:11.844-08:00 I worked on a Performancepoint last year for one of the end-to-end cycle of BI Implementation using the Monitoring and Analytics Module. There were quite a lot of shortcoming and it seemed very apparently like an incomplete product, released in a hurry. With the advent of Performancepoint Services in Sharepoint Server 2010, it seems like there are lot of new improvements from a user interface and designing point of view. One of the feature that was very strange was that, the graph that was available had only two colours, and there was no option to add another colours to it. We struggled quite a lot to find out a solution for the same but without any success.
Looking at the new features that are available in Performancepoint Services, the graph control looks much more matured now with the Pie-chart that was missing in the earlier version. Also there are new visualization available for the representation of data, more detailed representation of KPIs and many more. It seems like now Performancepoint has digested Proclarity to a great extent.
For a complete list of new features in performancepoint services 2010, check out this article. 
Free Dashboard Basics Tutorial / Online Training 2009-11-08T09:14:46.274-08:00 For those who are new to Performance Management, there is a FREE and useful course for Dashboard basics. This course would also give insight on how a Performancepoint Dashboard can help business. Check out this online course: PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics: Dashboard basics I PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics: Dashboard basics II  |
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