The next MN Microsoft Business Intelligence User Group has been scheduled and the agenda is set. This meeting we will have two sessions starting out with a Hennepin County Medical Center case study and then going over the new features in SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot. Just a reminder that the location for this event has now moved to the Microsoft Technology Center location in Edina.

MN Microsoft BI User Group 2012 Q1 Meeting

Sponsored by:

Date: Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Check In: 2:30 PM Event Time: 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Location: Microsoft Technology Center – 3601 76th St W, Suite 600 Edina MN 55435 (in LOW 1, 2, and 3)

To join via Live Meeting: Click Here

Please Register Now

Agenda:

• 2:30-3:00 : Registration
• 3:00-3:15 : Microsoft BI User Group Updates & Announcements
• 3:15-4:15 : HCMC Case Study – Healthcare BI
• 4:15-4:30 : Break
• 4:30-5:30 : Get the most out of DAX & PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012
• 5:30-7:00 : Social and Networking

Presentations:

Case Study: Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) – Healthcare BI (by Paul Volkmuth, HCMC; Mark Chisholm, HCMC; Mark Knutson, HCMC; Fazel Haris, Stratezon) – Healthcare presents some unique challenges in creating a BI infrastructure. Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) has created an innovative EDW to allow Knowledge Users to interactively query clinical information to gain insight into patient care, cost and payment. This session is a Case Study of our journey of developing a BI solution from the ground up using the Microsoft BI tool stack.

Get the most out of DAX & PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012 (by Paul Doyle & Greg Beaumont, GNet Group) – In this presentation we will cover how new functionality in PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012 supports personal, team and organizational BI. We will demonstrate standard DAX formulas for handling time intelligence, many-to-many relationships and security. We will also cover hierarchies, KPIs and PowerPivot visualizations so you are equipped to get started answering business analytics questions

Please Register Now

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE (2/21/2012): New presentation information – local author Brian Larson will be speaking

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week.  This month author Brian Larson will be speaking on using maps in Reporting Services and you will see not only how it can be used its analytical capabilities, but also for gaming.  Just a note that this month the meeting will be from 4 to 6 p.m. and don’t forget the new meeting location which is at the Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is True Source Recruiting of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, February 21 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=R9352R&role=attend&pw=QqGKDQ7%5Bp
• Meeting ID: R9352R
• Entry Code: QqGKDQ7[p

Agenda:

• 4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:15-4:30 : Announcements etc.
• 4:30-4:45 : SQL Tips/Tricks
• 4:45-5:45 : Geographic Visualizations Using Maps in SSRS (Brian Larson)
• 5:45-6:00 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Geographic Visualizations Using Maps in SSRS (Brian Larson, Superior Consulting Services – VP of Technology) – This session will explore the many and varied uses of the map report item in Reporting Services. From providing geographic analytics to diagramming locations on a warehouse floor plan, the map report item – when combined with SQL Server spatial data types – can be used in a variety of ways to create spatial representations of your data. We may even look at a game or two created using the map report item.

Last year I did a posting on Using PowerPivot with PerformancePoint Services (PPS) 2010. I thought it would be a good idea to do an updated posting with the new release of PowerPivot that will be coming out this year to show the new features that you will be able to take advantage of now.

Before we get started I need to point out that if you setup your SharePoint environment with a fresh install of SQL Server 2012 that you will also need to download and install the Analysis Services ADOMD.NET (version 10.5) data provider from the SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Feature Pack.

I had previously tried to reference PowerPivot SQL Server 2012 in the “Denali” CTP3 and in RC0 release and received the following error message when trying to configure the connection string in the PerformancePoint data source setup:

An error occurred connecting to this data source. Please check the data source for any unsaved changes and click on Test Data Source button to confirm connection to the data source.

I was glad that after reporting this that a resolution was found and that simply installing the older version of the ADOMD.NET provider was able to bridge the gap to the new version of the PowerPivot files with PerformancePoint – You Can Use SQL Server “Denali” PowerPivot Models as PerformancePoint 2010 Data Sources.  After you install the version 10.5 release of the data provider you will need to perform a iisreset after the installation to get this working properly in your environment so that you can create the data source in Dashboard Designer.  The previous version of the ADOMD.NET data provider was not needed to connect to the new Tabular version of SSAS, just for PowerPivot.

What’s New?

Okay, so now that we got that covered what are we able to do with the new release of PowerPivot?  Let’s take a look and see what has changed.

New Features Available in PowerPivot (disclaimer: this is based on the SQL Server 2012 RC0 release of PowerPivot) to use with PerformancePoint:

• Hierarchies! – yes, now we can define hierarchies in our data model such as Calendar with Year, Quarter, Month, and Date levels or Products with Category, Subcategory, and Product levels. In order to add hierarchies you have to use the new Diagram View that is another new feature to see a visual representation of your data model.  In addition to this you can also setup Parent-Child hierarchies as well with some of the new DAX capabilities with the PATH and PATHITEM functions to setup your levels and get at the relationships.
• Measures and formatting – measures are defined in the PowerPivot Window and part of our model. Another very nice feature that we can do now is set the format for measures that we define in the data model. So if we want to display the sales or profit we can do this in currency or if we want to display gross profit margin we can do that as a percent and we can specify the comma separator and number of decimals as well.
• Column sorting – in the R2 release of PowerPivot you might have noticed that everything was sorting alphabetically. So if you worked with say days of the week or month names you would have had to come up with some alternate naming conventions to get the values to display in the correct order that we are used to seeing them. Well in the 2012 release we now have the ability to base the sort order of a column off another columns, just like we can do in the Multidimensional Analysis Services development. So if we have a column for month number of year we can use that to properly sort the month names and we no longer have to incorporate the month number into the description that we display in our reports.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – you can define these now in your data model, but unfortunately at the time of this post you are not able to import KPIs from Tabular data models.  There is currently an open bug on connect related to this issue – can’t make PerformancePoint scorecard by importing tabular KPIs (feel free to vote this one up).
• Drillthrough (show details) – there is now drillthrough support for Tabular data models, so you can use the show details options on measures in your Analytical Reports. Granted you don’t have any abilities to customize the drillthrough output in PowerPivot models (Tabular will have this thanks to Greg Galloway and BIDS Helper), but you can see the detail data in the table that makes up the number.

Hierarchies

In the new Diagram View we can now right-click on a column in one of our tables and select the context menu option ‘Create Hierarchy’

We can then provide a meaningful name to the hierarchy (something besides Hierarchy1) and drag additional columns down into the hierarchy to add levels for users to provide the navigation path.

Now in this example I already used the RELATED function to pull in the product category and subcategory names into the product table.  I have also hidden the ProductSubcategory and ProductCategory tables from client tools so they will not be visible to the users when the data model is deployed (in the first image you can see that those tables are dimmed out, more transparent than the product table).  Now I might want to go ahead and rename the last item in my hierarchy here so that it is a little more cleaner.

In doing so you can see that in parenthesis I can still see the actual column in my data that it is referencing.  Now I could go ahead and hide the individual source columns that are being represented in our hierarchy.  This would force the users of the model to have to use the hierarchy to navigate the data.  That would be fine in most cases, but if you are going to use this data model with Power View you will want to keep them in the model since the initial release of Power View in SQL Server 2012 will not support hierarchies.  So if you hide them then you will not be able to see those columns or the hierarchy in your model and the users would not be able to properly analyze and report on the data.

In addition to the typical user defined hierarchies I also mentioned there is support for parent-child hierarchies.  So if you have a self-referencing table such as an Employee table that contains EmployeeKey and ParentEmployeeKey columns you can utilize DAX to establish the hierarchy path for each row and then defined the levels like the following:

=PATH(Employee[EmployeeKey], Employee[ParentEmployeeKey])

And once you have that setup you can setup additional calculated columns for each of the levels in the path that can then be used back in the Diagram View to establish the hierarchy just like the Products one above.

=LOOKUPVALUE(Employee[EmployeeName],Employee[EmployeeKey], PATHITEM(Employee[EmployeePath], 1,1))

Measures and Formatting

Another nice feature is the ability to designate the format output of the measures you define.  In the R2 release of PowerPivot you had to do this in Excel where you also created the measures and it was not actually part of the data model.  Well in this release not only is this capability part of the data model, but so are the measures.

First of all you have the ability to create and define explicit measures in your data model now.  There is a new portion in each table in our PowerPivot Window called the Calculation Area.  This is where we can define measures that will then become part of our data model.  Granted measures can still be created in Excel, but in doing this they will not get added back into the data model and exposed in the PowerPivot Window.

Now that we have some measures defined we can go ahead and add formatting to each of these by selecting the measure and using the Formatting section in the Home tab of the Ribbon or right-clicking on the measure and selecting Format… to open up the Formatting dialog box.

NOTE: when using PowerPivot with tools like PerformancePoint, Report Builder, and Report Designer (BIDS) you will need to define explicit measures.  Implicit measures will work in Excel with PowerPivot and in Power View, but not with these other tools.

The Calculation Area is a free form area and you can enter measures in any of the cells and the syntax you use is Measure Name:=[DAX Expression]

In the first screenshot above where I have the Reseller Total Sales measure I could actually take that and enter that in the Calculation Area in another table if I wanted.  In doing so I would have to alter the DAX a bit and make a direct reference to the table name like such – Reseller Total Sales:=SUM(ResellerSales[SalesAmount])

Column Sorting

In the v2 release of PowerPivot we now have the ability to define the way a column is sorted based on another column.  So for example in my Date table if I have a column called EnglishDayNameOfWeek with values Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. and I have another column called DayNumberOfWeek with values 1, 2, 3, etc. I can set the sort order of the first column to be based on the second column.  If we did not do this then the names would simply be sorted alphabetically like they were in v1 of PowerPivot.  In v1 of PowerPivot you could simply sort the values in Ascending order in a PivotTable to correct this, but in Slicers you did not have that ability and would have to typically setup a calculated column to sort the values properly like 1 Sun, 2 Mon, 3 Tue, etc.

Once you have the column selected you can then select the Sort by Column option in the Ribbon.  This will then open up the Sort by Column dialog box where you can specify the column to be sorted and then which column defines how it should be sorted.

You can use this to not only get typical items sorted properly like the days of the week and month names, but you could also use this to define custom report sorting that users would like to see.  So say you have predefined names you use to categorize your customers based on their sales like Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc. and this is how you want them displayed on your report (in this particular order).  Well now you can be defining another column in the table that has the values 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. respectively and setup the Sort by Column.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Defining KPIs in the PowerPivot models is a new feature that is available.  As I mentioned though, currently you are not able to import these into PerformancePoint to create an Analysis Services scorecard like you can with Multidimensional Analysis Services.  As an example though, here is what you can do if you want to set this up so that you can use them in Excel (which could then be displayed with Excel Services in your dashboard) or with Reporting Services (which could also be displayed in your dashboard).

First you need to define an explicit measure like we already did above with Reseller Total Sales.  Once you have this selected you can then click on the Create KPI option available in the Measures section of the Home tab in the Ribbon or you can right-click on the measure and select the option to Create KPI…  This will then open up the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) dialog box.

In the dialog box you can then specify the target to compare the measure to and this can reference another measure in the data model or an absolute value.  Once you have that defined you can then adjust the thresholds and select your icon styles.  Make sure you pick an appropriate icon style that not only has a color option, but also a shape to differentiate it because as I have noted before, there are people that are color blind (so do not just go with the default first icon style selection).

The other thing that you can do is specify some descriptions for the KPI (descriptions are another new feature and these are available on other items such as tables, columns, and measures).  The descriptions are then displayed to the end-user in say Excel when they are working with the PowerPivot field list and hovering over the items.

Once you have this setup you will notice a new icon next to the measure in the Calculation area (and in the Diagram View) which signifies that it is now configured as a KPI.

Just remember, you cannot import these currently into PerformancePoint, so you will still have to manually setup the KPIs.  Hopefully this will be resolved, just watch the Connect item link I provided above and feel free to vote it up as well.

Drillthrough (Show Details)

Not much to say here other than the fact that you can now get to the detail records that make up a particular measure value when displayed in Excel and in PerformancePoint.  So in PerformancePoint if you have the KPIs setup with the Data value calculation instead of the Default or you are displaying the measures in an Analytical Report you will now be able to select the Show Details option and actually display the individual rows that are in that table that make up the value.

The End Result – Dashboard in PPS

Okay, so now we know what the features are we can use, what do they look like in PerformancePoint.  Let’s take a look at that.

And last but not least….

Pretty sweet and I am looking forward to the new feature support.

If you are looking for the downloadable sample files for SQL Server 2012 take a look here SQL Server 2012 Samples ReadMe.

Head over to Pragmatic Works site and take a look at all of the training that is available for February – free training on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. EST.

• February 2, Anish Sana – SQL Server 2012 SSIS: New and Improved Features
• February 7, Herve Roggero – SQL Azure and SqlBulkCopy
• February 9, Cathy Eng – Moving On Up: Positioning Your Resume Above Your Competition
• February 14 (don’t forget, Valentine’s Day), Angel Abundez – Chart Anatomy 101 
• February 16, Dan Clark – Building Your First Tabular Model
• February 21, Mark Brown – Beginning Development for Business – Part 4: Running in the Halls
• February 23, Lara Rubbelke – Microsoft Big Data and Apache Hadoop
• February 28, Brian Knight – Managing SSIS in Denali

If you miss a session they record them and you can check them out later on-demand in the webinar resource area.

So what are you waiting for, get registered for one of these spectacular webinars today – Webinar Registration.

Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date on the training events through the PWFreeTraining twitter account as well.

Just wanted to do a quick post to make sure everyone was aware that there are a few SQL Server 2012 Launch events coming up in the near future. 

SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event

The first one is on Wednesday, March 7.  This is a free event and it is also an online virtual event as well.  There will be a couple of keynote presentations and then three tracks and it will even include a virtual ‘Expo Hall’ where you can talk with vendors and partners as well.  This will be a great event to get exposed to what is coming in SQL Server 2012 so you will be aware of the new features and capabilities.  Register now over at http://sqlserverlaunch.com/.

SQL Server 2012 Special Ops Tour

Another event that will be starting up in March is the SQL Server Special Ops Tour being put on by the PASS organization and Microsoft.  This will be in the U.S. only and going to 12 cities – Atlanta, Irvine, Denver, Columbus, Jacksonville, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.  Now this is not a virtual event, so seating will be limited.  Registration is open and it is a free event, so make sure you secure your spot today – http://specialops.sqlpass.org/#fbid=PH48KYb0Gig.

24 Hours of PASS – Spring 2012

Another 24 back-to-back hours of free SQL Server training is also coming up brought to by the PASS organization and the SQL community.  Call for speakers is currently open through tomorrow and the event will take place on March 21, focusing on SQL Server 2012 of course.  For more details check out the following link – http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/spring2012/.

SQL Server Connections – Spring 2012

If you are up for a conference and want to head to Las Vegas, NV, then you are in luck.  The Spring 2012 DevConnections conference is coming up and there will be a SQL Server 2012 Launch Conference and Expo included provided by Microsoft and SQL Server Connections.  This event takes place March 26-29.  For more information check out the details here – http://www.devconnections.com/shows/sp2012/default.aspx?s=185.

As you can probably tell the release date for SQL Server 2012 is coming up.  Lots of excitement and information is just pouring out and looking forward to the official release of the product.

I am running a little behind schedule after the New Year’s.  If you missed any of the sessions just remember that they are recorded.

Head over to Pragmatic Works site and take a look at all of the training that is available for January – free training on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. EST.

• January 3, Brian Knight – Introduction to PowerPivot 
• January 5, Mark Stacey – Analysis Services for the DBA 
• January 10, Arie Jones – Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012 
• January 12, K. Brian Kelley – Using PowerShell to Check Your SQL Server Security 
• January 17, Hope Foley – Super-size Your SSIS Breakfast Sandwich: Performance Tuning 2012 SSIS Data Loads 
• January 19, Devin Knight – Extending Reporting Services with Custom Code
• January 24, Mark Mortimore – Database Consolidation & Private Cloud Appliance – Available NOW!
• January 26, Eric Hanson – Performance Tuning with ColumnStore Indexes
• January 31, Mike Davis – Creating KPI’s, Actions, and Calculations in SSAS Cubes

If you miss a session they record them and you can check them out later on-demand in the webinar resource area.

So what are you waiting for, get registered for one of these spectacular webinars today – Webinar Registration.

Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date on the training events through the PWFreeTraining twitter account as well.

Enjoy!

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week on Tuesday, January 17. The topic this month is on writing better queries and the speaker is SQL Server MVP Joe Webb. Just a reminder that the meetings are no longer in Bloomington anymore, they are over at the Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, January 17 from 3 to 5 p.m.

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=6H3FKN&role=attend&pw=GZSh6-4HH
• Meeting ID: 6H3FKN
• Entry Code: GZSh6-4HH

Agenda:

• 3:00-3:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 3:15-3:30 : Announcements etc.
• 3:30-4:45 : Writing Better Queries – Joe Webb (Blog | MVP Profile)
• 4:45-5:00 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

Writing Better Queries (Joe Webb, WebbTech Solutions) – Transact-SQL is not a very difficult language to learn. As long as the syntax is correct, it can be quite forgiving. However to truly get the best performance from your SQL Server, careful consideration should be given to the structure and logic of the queries. In this session, we’ll discuss some Transact-SQL tips and tricks that can be employed to help you write better queries, allowing your server to perform better.

Last night was the monthly Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting at the new Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.  There was a good turnout for a December and a panel discussion with around maybe 40 or so.  The new PASSMN Board members for 2012 were announced:

• Chair – Steve Hughes
• Director of Program Development – Tim Plas
• Director of Membership/Treasurer – Joshuha Owen
• Director of Corporate Development – Bill Preachuk
• Director of Technology – Andy Lohn
• Director of SQL Saturday – Paul Timmerman
• Microsoft Liaison – Ajay Nangia

You can see that a new role was added to focus just on the SQL Saturday event which is tentatively scheduled for Friday, October 12, 2012 (so mark your calendars and start planning your sessions).

Congrats to the newly elected board members and congrats and well done to the 2011 Executive Board.  Jason Strate has handed over the reigns now and will focus on his PASS Regional Mentor role. 

The sponsor for the meeting was KForce and they provided cookies, cider, water, and coffee (along with some nice swag).  Everyone at the meeting got at least one if not two giveaways as well with all of the items that were contributed.

The SQL Server 2012 Panel discussion went well last night.  Lots of good questions, but we were limited on time so had to keep it fairly brief.  The topics that people were interested in were licensing changes (of course, this is changing from processor to core now, which was inevitable the way technology is heading), extended events, deprecated features, SSAS and PowerPivot, SSIS, cloud, appliances, and a few more.

For some information on the licensing changes check out the following links:

• SQL Server 2012 Editions
• SQL Server 2012 Licensing Overview
• Licensing Datasheet
• SQL Server 2012 FAQ

So start planning ahead and if you are thinking about buying licensing, now is the time so you can get covered with your software assurance for the new release.

If you want to check out the current release for testing purposes take a look at the resources here – SQL Server 2012 RC0 is here.

Happy holidays and see you in the new year!

A couple of weeks ago we had our final BI User Group meeting for the year in Minnesota.  We had our meeting at the new location at the new Microsoft Technology Center in Edina which is a fabulous facility.  This month we had two presentations, one was an I.C. System case study by Rowland Gosling and the other was covering Integration Services (SSIS) 2012 new features by Steve Hughes. Both presentations were recorded, but for some reason the audio was not captured for our first one.

The content for the meeting is available on the user group site – 12/6/2011 I. C. System Case Study and SSIS SQL Server 2012.

You can download the presentation material, the BI User Group opening presentation material, and you can access the video from Steve’s presentation as well which is available on Vimeo.

In addition to that I mentioned a couple of resources at the meeting that I would follow up with to provide the group.  I did post these after the meeting in the discussion area on our LinkedIn Group – Microsoft BI User Group of Minnesota.

• 5 Tips for a Smooth SSIS Upgrade to SQL Server 2012
• SSIS SQL Server 2012 Report Pack on CodePlex

If you are not signed up for the LinkedIn group I would highly recommend it.  This is a great way for you to connect and network with others, interact with discussions, receive user group updates and news, and post or access job opportunities.  I know that we have more than 73 people in the user group, so let’s see if we can get the membership number up before the next meeting in March.

Since I brought up the next meeting let’s talk about the dates for next year.  Here are the scheduled dates for next year’s meetings:

• Tue, Mar 6 2012
• Tue, Jun 5 2012
• Wed, Sep 5 2012
• Tue, Dec 4 2012

The meetings will continue to be at the new location – Microsoft Technology Center – 3601 76th St W, Suite 600 Edina MN 55435 (in LOW 1, 2, and 3).

Next month we are planning on sending out a user group survey to get some feedback of how things are going and to plan accordingly for the upcoming year to determine if any changes or particular content is needed.  Please take the time to provide us some feedback.  We are already lining up presentations for next year and we use your evaluations and feedback to help us determine the content that is presented, so this is valuable information.  So if you don’t provide feedback then it is hard for us to know what you are interested in or would like to see changed or improved upon.

We are looking to a great 2012 with a new product launch.  If you have heard there is a new version of SQL Server coming out and you can download and take a look at the latest release that is available – SQL Server 2012 RC0 is here.

Until then I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season!

In this post I will go over the installation of the new “Data Explorer” client tool that is available to download as an Office plugin providing you the ability to launch the tool from within Excel.  Data Explorer is a new tool available in the SQL Azure Labs in the cloud that allows you to do some self-service ETL capabilities.  You can pull in your data from Excel, flat files, databases, the web, data feeds, etc. and then mash the data up as well.  Along with this Microsoft will also provide you additional data recommendations form the Azure Data Marketplace that might be of interest to integrate with your data and then you can publish the new set of data.  Once the new data is published you can consume it back into Excel using the Excel plugin and also make it available to others to consume as well.

So let’s take a look at the requirements for this new Excel plugin:

System requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista

• .NET 3.5 SP1
• Office 2010 SP1 or Office 2007

You can download the tool (32-bit or 64-bit) from the Microsoft Download Center here – SQL Azure Labs Codename “Data Explorer” Client (Labs Release)

Here is a quick walkthrough of the install process

Once you have this installed you will see that this adds a new add-in to Excel called ‘Data Explorer Excel Add-In’:

And this will add a new section in the ‘Data’ tab of the Excel Ribbon called ‘Data Explorer’ with two buttons, one opens the Data Explorer tool to create workspaces and work with data, and the other one allows you to connect so that you can consume data into Excel.

The current version of the Data Explorer client is:

Version: 1.0.2755.2 (Release)

For more information check out the following sites:

• SQL Azure Labs: Microsoft Codename “Data Explorer”
• Data Explorer Team Blog
• Data Explorer MSDN Page

Check out some of the postings by fellow SQL Server MVPs Jamie Thomson and Chris Webb as well:

• Chris Webb BI Blog – Data Explorer
• Jamie Thomson SSIS Junkie – Data Explorer

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week on Tuesday, December 20. The topic this month is panel discussion on SQL Server 2012.  One thing to point out is that the meetings are no longer in Bloomington anymore, they are over at the Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

Location: 3601 West 76th Street, Suite 600 Edina, MN 55437

Date/Time: Tuesday, December 20 from 3 to 5 p.m. 

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=TS4JWB&role=attend&pw=P%7CT%5C%5Bz3%3Ef
• Meeting ID: TS4JWB
• Entry Code: P|T\[z3>f

Agenda:

• 3:00-3:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 3:15-3:30 : Announcements etc.
• 3:30-4:45 : SQL Server 2012 Feature Panel Discussion
• 4:45-5:00 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

Please click here for meeting details and to RSVP for the event

SQL Server 2012 Panel:

Steve Hughes is Principal Consultant at Magenic Technologies. His area of expertise is in data and business intelligence architecture on the Microsoft SQL Server platform. He was also the data architect for a SaaS company which delivered a transportation management solution for fleets across the United States. Steve has co-authored two books and regularly presents on SQL Server and data architecture.

Ajay Nangia is a Data Platform Technology Specialist at Microsoft. In this role, Ajay enables customers and partners to develop, deploy, and support solutions based on Microsoft’s Database Technologies. Ajay has a long history of working with SQL Server – from its internals to application and BI development on the platform.

Others – as far as I know there will be a few others on the panel as well. Jin Cho from Microsoft will be there along with possibly Lara Rubbelke from Microsoft and myself (maybe Jason Strate as well?).

Hope to see you there and looking forward to some good discussions and questions regarding SQL Server 2012!

Now that the SQL Server 2012 RC0 release is out I wanted to do a follow up posting to my Using Images in Tabular BI Semantic Models with Crescent (now officially known as Power View).  With this release there is now full support for using images stored in the database – binary data type support has now been added to model development in PowerPivot and Tabular Analysis Services projects.

In this example I will use the AdventureWorksDW database sample again that I used in the previous posting.  First I will load the data into a model using SQL Server Data Tools (formerly known as Business Intelligence Development Studio – BIDS) inside a Tabular Analysis Services project.

Nothing new here except for the fact you will notice some changes in the Properties area for the column compared to what it looked like in the CTP3 release where now we have two sections – Basic and Reporting Properties.

If we just go ahead and deploy the project as-is without making any changes what will happen?  Will we be able to start using the LargePhoto column?  Let’s take a look.  If we deploy the project and then setup a BI Semantic Model Connection in SharePoint

And then launch Power View

We will see that the LargePhoto column is not available in our Field List to select from

And yes, now the field list is in alphabetical order! Awesome.

So how do we make this column available?  Let’s go back into the model design.  In order to make this column available we need to do two things.

First we need to set the row identifier property on the Product table and we will do this using the ProductKey column and set that property to True.

Next we need to set the default image property on the LargePhoto column and change this value to True.

Now we deploy our model again to our server and refresh the browser to reconnect to our model connection.  Now what do we see in the field list?

We now see the LargePhoto column and we can use this in our visualizations that we add to the Power View canvas.

Tada!

Now how do we do this in PowerPivot with the RC0 add-in?  Well this has changed a bit as well now as far as the UI.

First you need to switch to Advanced Mode in the PowerPivot Window

Now with the Product table selected switch to the Advanced tab in the Ribbon and click on the new Table Behavior option in the Reporting Properties section

Now we will get a new dialog box where we will need to set the row identifier and default image properties for our Product Table

Now that we have this set we can upload this to our PowerPivot Gallery and launch Power View

And now we should see the exact same list and options like we had with our Tabular project

Success!

And that is the quick update I wanted to post in regards to the change in RC0 for support for database images and to show you how some of the property and menu options have changed.

Enjoy and don’t forget to get your copy of SQL Server 2012 RC0 so you can start testing it out and planning your roadmap change to the next release of SQL Server.

If you are looking for resources and information to the RC0 release check out this great list that Nick MacKechnie put together here – SQL Server 2012 RC News.

The next TDWI Minneapolis Chapter meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, December 13 and it will take place in Minneapolis at the University of St. Thomas. The meeting will be talking about agile data warehousing and business intelligence. Here are all of the details:

http://tdwichapters.org/Minneapolis (or http://www.tdwimpls.org/)

When: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Where:  University of St. Thomas – Minneapolis Campus, Opus Hall 201, 1000 LaSalle Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403

Use this interactive map the St. Thomas campus to locate Opus Hall and nearby parking.

Parking tip: Use the city-owned parking lot adjoining the campus by entering on Hennepin Ave at 10th. The elevator can bring you directly to the second level where our meeting room is located.

Thanks to Jim O’Connor and the University of St. Thomas for hosting this event.

Click here to register for the next upcoming event

Agenda:

• 7:45 – 8:15 a.m. – Networking and Registration
• 8:15 – 8:30 a.m. – Introduction and Chapter Business
• 8:30 – 9:45 a.m. – Extreme Scoping™, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence – Larissa Moss
• 10:00 – 10:15 a.m. – Break and Networking
• 10:15 – 11:30 a.m. – Extreme Scoping™, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence – Larissa Moss Part II
• 11:30 – 11:45 p.m. – Q&A and Collaboration
• 11:45 – 12:00 p.m. – Closing Comments & Wrap-Up

Click here to register for the next upcoming event

Abstract – There is unanimous agreement among agile authors, experts, and practitioners that agile development works well for building small, stand-alone systems, including front-end BI applications, for one user or one department. However, there is considerable disagreement among these experts whether agile can work for large, complex systems like an enterprise data warehouse, which requires an enterprise perspective across many users and many departments for activities like data standardization, data integration, enterprise data modeling, business rules ratification, coordinated ETL data staging, common metadata, collectively architected databases, and so on. Today’s popular agile methodologies were not designed to address any of these additional EDW/BI-specific complexities and interdependencies. But the Extreme Scoping™ approach presented by Larissa Moss was specifically designed for enterprise data warehouse solutions because it merges agile principles with a robust EDW/BI methodology.

Head over to Pragmatic Works site and take a look at all of the training that is available in December – free training on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. EST.

There will be no sessions the last week of December for the holidays, so enjoy your time with your family and friends!

• December 1, Adam Jorgensen – Performance Tuning SSAS
• December 6, Mike Davis – New SSIS Features in Denali
• December 8, Mike Davis – Monitoring SQL Server with SSIS
• December 13, Adam Jorgensen – Building Tier 1 SSAS Solutions 
• December 15, Adam Jorgensen– Operational Best Practices in SSAS 
• December 20, Mark Brown – Beginning Development for Business Part 3: Playing in closets 
• December 22, Brian Knight – Dynamically Configuring Packages

If you miss a session they record them and you can check them out later on-demand in the webinar resource area.

They already have the line up going for next year as well, so if you want to plan ahead you are all set. Just remember the disclaimer that the speakers are subject to change, so always check back to see what is going on.

So what are you waiting for, get registered for one of these spectacular webinars today – Webinar Registration.

Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date on the training events through the PWFreeTraining twitter account as well.

Enjoy!

This month we had our 2nd SQL Saturday event in Minnesota. We stuck with the Friday setup that we have done in the past and had it on Friday, November 11 (11/11/11 – for SQL11).  This was our 3rd event like this, but just the 2nd one formally branded SQL Saturday.  Each year we have continued to see growth going from around 100 to 250 to around 350 now this year.  Great attendance numbers and fantastic to see such this type of a turnout.  A special thanks to the event organizing committee, volunteers, sponsors, and Grace church for making this all day free training event possible.  We had 35 sessions (as well as 2 lunch session from our You Rock sponsors – Quest and HP Microsoft Frontline Partnership) and 35 speakers which included 4 Microsoft SQL Server MVPs.

Two sessions that I attended that I really found interesting were the Women in Technology Panel Discussion and the SQL Community & Social Networking Roundtable.  This was the first time we had these sessions and I thought the discussions and interactions that went on during these were fantastic and I enjoyed the sharing and insights that occurred.  I can only hope that these sessions help to inspire others and continue to grow in attendance going forward.  I know I always tend to consider the technical sessions, so this was a first for me and I got to participate on the SQL Community & Social Networking Roundtable.

So how do I feel we did this year? Well for starters the attendance was up 40% compared to last year. That tells me we are doing something right.  Once again the sponsorship was fantastic and it is unbelievable to see the support we get from local and national sponsors to put on these events.  I think as a group we did a super job in getting everything put together, especially since this is not what we do for our day job.

If I review my items from last year, SQL Saturday 58 – Minnesota: Follow up & Lessons Learned, I think we did improve. 

• speaker room – this year we had a dedicated speaker area! this was very helpful and provided a nice area for our speakers to prep as well as relax and chat.
• evaluation forms – we had volunteers collecting and handing out evaluations, but we still need to improve in this area as far as distribution and collection of evaluation forms. Having these in the event bags would be a good idea as well as having a dedicated drop off location in each room.
• planning committee/volunteers – we had more people involved organizing the event.  This was nice having more people involved so tasks could be split out as far as sponsorship, speakers/sessions, location, speaker dinner, registration, etc. The more help and coordination helps greatly for events this large.
• communication – getting more event information out sooner to attendees is always a good thing, can’t hurt to do more in this area, definitely helps in the long run. Providing more logistics and event layout to attendees ahead of time would be good idea for next year in email format.  Not everyone checks out the event site, twitter, or reads blogs to get this additional information.
• signage – more event signage would be good, particularly around the registration area.
• registration – doubling the size of the registration team and adjusting the schedule to provide for more time up front would be good as well (we got slammed all at once and did the best we could possibly do, but when everyone shows up around the same time there just is not much you can do).
• session rooms – the room sizes varied a bit and I think they worked well as far as the number of seats available this year. I think the setup for a few of the rooms could be revisited as far as the location of the speaker podium – keep these off to the side instead of directly front and center in front of the projector screens.
• wifi – not much I can say here, it was awful, so hopefully no one had to use it during a presentation, but I know for sure at least one speaker was trying.
• shirts – everyone this year got an event shirt and the speaker shirts were an upgrade from last year as well. The quality of the shirts was very nice.

I wasn’t able to attend that many sessions, but I did find time to sit in on a few.  I just wanted to try and help out as much as possible and I enjoyed being able to chat with everyone.  Next year the event will continue to grow and I hope that we can possibly get up to 500 in attendance.  Is this possible?  I think it is, but it will mean more planning, coordination, and communication.

If you want to check out some of the session content you can download the material from the schedule page for the event.  If you see an asterisk after the session title that means that the material has been uploaded and is available for download.  Simply click on the session link and you will see the download button.

Can’t have a follow up without some additional stats for comparison sake:

Once again thanks to everyone that made this event possible and thanks to everyone that attended the event, we hope that you had a great time and enjoyed the sessions.  If you were able to walk away with a couple of nuggets of information and/or expand your social network then I would chalk this one up as a success.