Anybody who has had to worry about implementing security in a SharePoint environment has at some point run into challenges with impersonating end users and passing their credentials all the way to the analysis services cube for authorization. The dreaded two hop challenges necessitated having to implement Kerberos authentication which has caused a lot of … Continue reading Kerberos Configuration Manager for SQL Server
Unpivot data using Microsoft Data Explorer
I have been really impressed with Microsoft Data Explorer the minute I had a chance to play with it as I was able to turn formatted Excel reports into legitimate data sources available for analysis. Fairly recently, an update to the tool delivered an uber critical feature that makes a huge impact on the world … Continue reading Unpivot data using Microsoft Data Explorer
GeoFlow is going public
The public preview of GeoFlow is now available here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/download-geoflow-for-excel-FX104036784.aspx I would definitely grab the "Data Explorer" plug in while I were there...(also available here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/download-data-explorer-for-excel-FX104018616.aspx) There are plenty of reviews and good tutorials of both products available elsewhere, but in the coming few days I will try to write about where I think these … Continue reading GeoFlow is going public
PowerPivot File Size Limit in Excel 2013
This is more of a note to self as I am constantly self-confusing myself with how much data can be loaded into a PowerPivot model. Basically, there are two things to consider, version of office one is running and whether a SharePoint deployment option is required. First, whether one is running a 32 or a 64 … Continue reading PowerPivot File Size Limit in Excel 2013
SAP vs. Microsoft, Information Assets vs. End User Experience positioning
If your company runs SAP, chances are the picture below represents your environment pretty well The black colors represent the existing investments/business processes and the size of the bubbles represents the effort/investment $$$. Your company has made a very large investment in the SAP back-end (ERP, BW, etc.) which is represented by a large black circle … Continue reading SAP vs. Microsoft, Information Assets vs. End User Experience positioning
SAP Visual Intelligence vs. Microsoft PowerPivot and PowerView
In this post I will review the latest version of SAP Visual Intelligence – 1.08 – and see how it stacks up against the Microsoft self-service BI tools, Excel, PowerPivot and PowerView. In the initial release, Visual Intelligence only supported SAP Hana, but in its latest iteration few other data sources are supported: CSV File … Continue reading SAP Visual Intelligence vs. Microsoft PowerPivot and PowerView
How to think strategic about Business Intelligence
Many people reach out to me asking for advice in helping them evaluate various BI platforms for their companies. In my mind I am obviously the wrong guy to ask as I am not shy to admit my fairly heavy bias towards Microsoft. However, over the course of the last twenty years, I have been exposed … Continue reading How to think strategic about Business Intelligence
Customizing PowerView in PowerPoint
Although "customizing" may be too strong of a word, there are few things that we can tweak to improve the look and feel of PowerView slides that had just been exported from SharePoint. The first thing to do after the fresh export is to adjust the size of the exported image. For some reason as … Continue reading Customizing PowerView in PowerPoint
Microsoft BI ranks highest in ability to execute by Gartner
Microsoft once again is ranked the highest in its ability to execute by Gartner in its magic quadrant for Business Intelligence. The report is pretty long and boring, but if I were distill it down to a few salient points, I would choose the following: Companies see a dramatic improvement in BI capabilities going from … Continue reading Microsoft BI ranks highest in ability to execute by Gartner
Some comments on the CTP of the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With PowerView For Multidimensional Models
I have had a pretty frustrating experience with it so far. I think that the only way get it to work is to have it deployed as a SSRS Service Application inside SharePoint and then configure PowerView. In other words, if you are planning to install a multidemensional instance of the CTP, install your OLAP cube … Continue reading Some comments on the CTP of the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With PowerView For Multidimensional Models
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