I will start this post with a bit of a rant. There are two types of people in the Business Intelligence world: Those who do not like Excel Those who do Most of the right-click-hating low tech users belong to the first category (they are also usually the same people who like bubble gum and … Continue reading Improving performance of Excel reports against Analysis Services
PowerView in Windows 8 Release Preview
I was eagerly awaiting the new Release Preview of Windows 8 as I was hoping it would address some of the shortcomings with respect to the Microsoft BI Stack and Windows 8 that I blogged about before. One of the new features introduced in to the IE 10 was Flash support. I have not read … Continue reading PowerView in Windows 8 Release Preview
PowerView in Office 365
One of the big frastrations with Office 365 was its limited support (trying to stay positive here) of some of the key SharePoint features, such as, for example, Microsoft Business Intelligence stack. Even though the current iteration does support PowerPivot and Excel Services. Rumor has it PowerView will be supported in Office 365 starting June, … Continue reading PowerView in Office 365
HTML5 support for PowerView and the rest of the Microsoft BI stack
Had a long conversation with a senior Microsoft executive few days ago. It appears that HTML5 support for PowerView will be released with the Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012 by the end of this calendar year. A little too late for my taste, but I will take what I can get. My prognostication is … Continue reading HTML5 support for PowerView and the rest of the Microsoft BI stack
Loading data in MDS programmatically
As I demo MDS, there is one question that is asked pretty often - "Do I have to use the Import Wizard to pull the data from the Stage table into the MDS table?". Microsoft made this a little bit confusing so I am going to explain how Stage sync can be initiated programmatically. There … Continue reading Loading data in MDS programmatically
Dynamic security in a tabular model for analysis services
The second iteration of the tabular model for analysis services now allows us to implement very sophisticated security scenarios including row-level dynamic security. In order to implement it, first we need the means of finding out the windows credentials of the user. That can be accomplished using the DAX function USERNAME(). Second, we need to map … Continue reading Dynamic security in a tabular model for analysis services
More on Powerview on my Windows 8 Tablet
I have finally figured out how to exit the Full Screen mode on a tablet. Normally, one would need to hit Escape to exit into the reading or editing modes. Since there are no Esc key on the soft keyboard, it was always a challenge for me to exit out. Yesterday, I finally found something … Continue reading More on Powerview on my Windows 8 Tablet
PowerView on Google Chrome
I just noticed that Chrome is not listed as a supported browser for PowerView and in fact somebody already filed it as an issue on the connect site here http://bit.ly/IYwdfx. I normally use Internet Explorer for everything work related, but I also use Chrome a lot for email and also Google Music service (not that it would not run … Continue reading PowerView on Google Chrome
How to create Sharepoint workflow for MDS
Microsoft Master Data Services is one of the most exciting new features of SQL Server 2012. Technically, the V1 of the product was introduced with SQL Server 2008 R2, but to be completely honest, it did not get much acceptance. In my prognostication, this will drastically change with the V2 of the product. There are two … Continue reading How to create Sharepoint workflow for MDS
Reading and Loading SharePoint Data using SSIS
Lists are one of the cornerstones of SharePoint and many companies have a wealth of information stored and managed using this SharePoint feature. I sometimes get questions whether it is possible to extract that data (or load that data) into a data warehouse or a cube elsewhere. The answer is yes, using the SharePoint SSIS Adapters. … Continue reading Reading and Loading SharePoint Data using SSIS
business intelligist 