The next TDWI Minneapolis Chapter meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 12 and it will take place in Minneapolis at the University of St. Thomas. The meeting will be talking about the future of IT.
 
http://tdwichapters.org/Minneapolis (or http://www.tdwimpls.org/)

Here are all of the details:

When: Tuesday, June 12, 2012, 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. – The Future of IT: Radical Changes Ahead – David Wells
• 10:00 – 10:15 a.m. – Break and Networking
• 10:15 – 11:30 a.m. – The Future of IT: Radical Changes Ahead – David Wells (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:

A lasting effect of the recession economy is radical change for information technology organizations and IT professionals.  When the economic recovery occurs, many things will to return to pre-recession conditions. But information technology has been forever changed. Financially driven changes (“we can’t afford it”) quickly led to discovery driven changes (“we can live without it” and “we’ve found a better way”) that foretell a substantial IT shift. The change affects organizations, individuals, programs, and careers. With cloud computing, the need for large data centers is reduced. Software as a Service (SaaS) changes the developer role, and Data as a Service (DaaS) changes the DBA role. Social networking and collaboration tools redefine the nature of teamwork.  Data and technology savvy business managers change relationships and expectations.

The next generation of IT must be lean, agile, and responsive. Expect to see many traditional IT responsibilities spin off to business units, and many IT jobs absorbed into business roles. Not just another cycle of decentralization, this is a fundamental change in the positioning of IT – a convergence where Business/IT alignment is no longer enough and Business/IT integration is the new goal. This change raises many big questions and many hard questions. What does it mean for your organization, for your BI and MDM programs, for data governance and for IT governance? These are but a few of the critical questions. Perhaps most importantly you need to know what it means for you and your IT career.

Update 5/25/2012: Just had someone reach out to me today in regards to a file size issue with the extract.  They were stating that it required 6PB instead of 60GB of space.  When doing the extract they were using the built-in extracting within Windows 7.  I had used WinRAR without any issues.  They downloaded that tool and successfully extracted the files.  Just wanted to make mention of this in case anyone else runs into an issue like this.

After I heard that the new version of the Microsoft Business Intelligence VHD was available I downloaded it to check it out.  The major change was that it now had the RTM release of SQL Server 2012 all setup on it.  You can check out the new demo solution in the catalog here http://mssalesdemos.com and you can download it from here http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/pd/BIVHD/enus/.

You can download the VHD Hyper-V image, the zip file is 21.6GB and when you extract out the contents you will need approximately 58GB of space (and you will also want some free space as well because the image is setup to grow out to 250GB if needed).  The recommended memory to run this is 8GB, but unfortunately I don’t have that available, so I tested it out with only around 4.5GB of RAM and devoted 2 processors to try and run it with VirtualBox.

The password for the image is the typical pass@word1 for the contoso\Administrator user.  The name of the server is SQLIMAGE2012.

Now since I am using VirtualBox I disabled all of the Hyper-V services along with some additional ones that are not needed to save on some RAM like Remote Desktop services and Windows Defender.  I then took a look at the SQL Services setup and … grrrr … noticed that there are just a few, like three instances.  By this I mean there are three instances of the DB engine (which are definitely not needed), none of the SQL Agent services are running, all three of the SSAS services are running which is good, and they also have two instances of SSRS running (no idea why, similar to the DB engine setup).

So here is the breakdown on the three DB engine instances, the default is for all of the sample databases for the demos along with the MDS database:

The multidimensional instance is where the DQS databases reside:

And the PowerPivot instance is where the SharePoint databases reside:

Wow, let’s see how they are doing on memory with all three of them running:

If you are not going to be doing any DQS you can safely shutdown the Multidimensional instance until you are ready to do so (free up a little more memory).  In looking at the database names I don’t see the SSISDB catalog, so I guess there are probably no demos of any Integration Services.

So along with this I also have to watch out for the other SQL services like Analysis Services (SSAS) that needs a bit of memory:

The top one is the Multidimensional instance, the second one is the PowerPivot, and the third instance (the default) is Tabular SSAS.  So the majority of the data and memory consumption is happening in the PowerPivot and Tabular databases which makes since with the xVelocity in-memory database technology at work here.

Then don’t forget about the two Native instances of SSRS running:

Probably don’t need either of these running and by looking at the database names I only see the databases setup for the new SharePoint Integrated mode setup as the Shared Service Application.  So you could safely shut both of these down for the time being as well.

Well how about we take a look at the SharePoint setup and some of the demos.  In attempting to go to the SQL Image 2012 home page (http://intranet.contoso.com/SitePages/Home.aspx) I got that the page could not be displayed.  So I went to the localhost or server name page instead and it worked just fine (http://sqlimage2012/SitePages/Home.aspx).  Without troubleshooting this further I went with the server name setup and had to modify my connection and URL references for the Power View reports.

We can see a few minor typos with the Power View name not including the space.  The scripts for each of the demos is provided in the Shared Documents library:

All of the images that will be used for the demos have been setup on a separate website instead of being stored in SharePoint:

Here are the examples of the Power View reports:

And there is a nice home page setup for the Contoso Telco company as well (this uses the Multidimensional instance of SSAS, so if you shut that down you will need to start it back up).  You might need to refresh it a few times to get the site and data warmed up a bit so that everything gets displayed:

Well that is the quick overview of the new XII image.  There is plenty more and I will keep exploring and leave some for you to check out as well, enjoy!

So last week I was doing a presentation on Self-Service BI with SQL Server 2012 at the TechFuse MN technical conference and I realized that my demo virtual machine was still running SQL Server 2012 RC0.  I was thinking that I shouldn’t do my presentation and demos using RC0, so why not upgrade.  Probably not the best idea to do this just a few days out from a presentation, but I had my fingers cross and just went for it.

I found some guidance from a thread in the forums by Jen Underwood here Upgrade in place RC0 to RTM and decided to go for it.  I did the in-place upgrade and my SharePoint virtual machine with SQL 2012 was still functioning after I completed all of the steps.  Then I moved on to testing my integrated SSRS setup and realized that the Power View reports were not working and neither were my data sources.  The quick fix for that was to go into Central Administration and go into the properties of the Reporting Services application and click OK.  That completed the upgrade process for my shared service and my Power View reports functioned properly after that.

Next was to verify my PowerPivot was still working.  I opened up my PowerPivot files and uploaded them to SharePoint.  The snapshots appeared in the PowerPivot Gallery just fine, but I was unable to work with the files (the slicers did not work, I received error messages as shown below).  I also went into Central Administration and tried to checkout the PowerPivot management dashboard.  In doing this I received the same error message below:

An error occurred during an attempt to establish a connection to the external data source. The following connection failed to refresh: PowerPivot Data

I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, but after the fix for the SSRS shared service I was thinking that maybe I needed to do the same for the PowerPivot application.  SO I decided that I would try to re-run the PowerPivot configuration tool which is new with the SQL Server 2012 installation.

The following are the screenshots of running the PowerPivot Configuration Tool with the SQL Server 2012 RTM installation software against my virtual machine that was RC0:

Once that was done I went back into Central Administration and checked out the PowerPivot Management Dashboard again:

Everything was working as expected again and no more error messages! Victory!

That was quite the relief and I was able to do my presentation with my newly upgraded RTM release of SQL Server 2012, not bad for doing an in-place upgrade just a few days prior to the big event.  This included three instances of SSAS (multidimensional, tabular, and PowerPivot), the SQL database engine, SSRS, SSRS SharePoint integrated, SSIS, and DQS as well.

Here is some additional information if you are looking to do the upgrade for DQS – Upgrade DQS: SQL Server 2012 RC0 to SQL Server 2012 RTM.

Yesterday was the final day of the Minnesota TechFuse technical conference.  I presented after Jason Strate and presented on Self-Service BI with SQL Server 2012.  Overall I think the presentation went well and the demo gods were watching out for me and everything went very smoothly.  I even finished early and I think that is a first.  There were some excellent questions asked in regards to the use of PowerPivot within an organization.  I completely understand the concerns and I think it is just inevitable the business and IT will need to work together to make it a success.  Excel is definitely not going away and is one of the #1 client based tools, so we need to figure out how this fits and works within our organizations and develop a strategy around it.

I thought it was interesting in the lunch keynote by Peter High when he made a statement saying that IT should not consider the different departments within their organization as internal customers, they should see them as colleagues.  I really never thought about it, but I guess being in IT I have felt that not only are there the external customers we serve but there is also internal customers.  Viewing everyone within our organization as colleagues makes a lot of sense and I thought that was a very good point.

The SQL/BI tracked ended on a great note with Brian Larson providing a great introduction to Data Mining within SQL Server.  He went over, as he stated, one of the less commonly used features of SQL Server.  There is a lot of potential and insights that data mining can provide us not only in making predictions, but also with data validation to perform sanity checks.

Presentation

I did setup some resource links in my presentation and I have included them below as well with some tiny URL references that I setup ahead of time:

Resources

- Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View (book) – http://tinyurl.com/powerviewbook

- Microsoft Business Intelligence http://tinyurl.com/msftbi

- PowerPivot http://tinyurl.com/msftpowerpivot
- PowerPivotPro (Rob Collie) Blog http://www.powerpivotpro.com

- Power View Overview http://tinyurl.com/mspowerview
- Power View Samples – 6 samples to test out http://tinyurl.com/msbitryit

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 an adventure into MDX with the Star Trek experience and then a presentation about agile business intelligence with SQL Server 2012. 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 Q2 Meeting

Sponsored by:

Date: Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Check In: 2:30 PM Event Time: 3:00 PM – 6:00 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
• 3:15-4:30 : MDX Trek: First Contact
• 4:30-4:45 : Break
• 4:45-5:30 : Agile BI with SQL Server 2012
• 5:30-6:00 : Social and Networking

Presentations:

MDX Trek: First Contact (by Mark Vaillancourt, Digineer) – Cube space; the final frontier. In this Star Trek themed introduction to MDX, we will discuss the fundamentals of cube structure and vocabulary, including tuples, members, sets, hierarchies, and more. We will introduce and demonstrate the basic syntax of MDX with queries that include navigating hierarchies and even some time-based expressions. This session will give you the tools you need to write simple, yet meaningful, MDX queries in your own environment.

Agile BI with SQL Server 2012 (by Neelesh Raheja, GNet Group and Terry McDonald, Pentair) – There is always pressure from business users to deliver flexible, fast, self-service and cost effective BI/Data Warehouse solutions. Going into a BI project, we expect that business requirements will evolve and change; one business question will lead to another, creating challenges in managing scope, iterations, timelines and costs. With a traditional waterfall BI project execution approach it can take several months to incorporate new functionality in a data warehouse and update reports, creating a backlog and falling short of users’ expectations.

In this session we will show how agile BI project execution can be implemented using Microsoft SQL Server 2012. We will explore how PowerPivot and Analysis Services 2012 enable additional flexibility; accelerating the time it takes to deliver value with BI projects. Agile techniques along with self-service tools offer an opportunity to transform traditional BI project development methods to fit dynamic user requirements and accelerate development, testing and deployment. We will also present a strategy, process and key considerations for using Agile techniques to promote ad-hoc self service reports to a corporate BI solution.

 
Please Register Now

Hope to see you there!

Are you ready for some training? Well you are in luck because next week is the Minnesota TechFuse event which is a 2-day event of jam packed learning.  Day 1 kicks off on Wed, May 16 and is focused on the cloud and then Day 2 is on Thu, May 17 and contains information in regards to the latest trends and developments with technology.  Right now you can attend both days of the event for $549 or a single day for only $399.  There are 48 sessions, 12 tracks, 35 presenters, 7 Microsoft MVPs, and 2 keynotes lined up for this technical conference.

• TechFuse 2012 site
• Session List
• Speaker List

I will be speaking on Day 2 in the SQL Server/Business Intelligence track.  I will be presenting after Jason Strate and my topic is “Self-Service BI with SQL Server 2012”.  Brian Larson from Superior Consulting Services will also be presenting in the afternoon on Data Mining with SQL Server.

Self-Service BI with SQL Server 2012
Time: 10:00 – 11:15
Dan English, Superior Consulting Services
Session Level: 200-Intermediate
Audience: IT Pros and Information Workers

This session will cover the enhancements and new features in SQL Server 2012 as Microsoft continues its roadmap with self-service BI. Topics include the changes that have been made to PowerPivot in Excel, as well as the new features. There will be a demo showing how PowerPivot models can be used in SharePoint along with Power View to provide self-service reporting capabilities to end-users. This session will also cover what Power View is, how it works, and what you can do with this new reporting feature that is part of SharePoint SSRS 2012 Integrated Mode.

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week. This month Lara Rubbelke will be talking about Big Data and leveraging Hadoop to gain additional insights.  Don’t forget the new meeting location which is at the Minneapolis Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Emergent Networks.

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

Date/Time: Tuesday, May 15 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=7782N3&role=attend&pw=46%7Cmjt-%40C
• Meeting ID: 7782N3
• Entry Code: 46|mjt-@C

Agenda:

• 4:00-4:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:15-4:30 : Quick Start for Basic Presentations
• 4:30-5:45 : Introducing Microsoft’s Big Data Solution
• 5:45-6:00 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

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

Quick Start for Basic Presentations (Jason Strate, Digineer) – This presentation will cover two areas.  First, talk about how terrible of a speaker I was, and how I’m not that much better now.  Then outline a “basic” presentation format – like a quick start.

Introducing Microsoft’s Big Data Solution (Lara Rubbelke, Microsoft) – Welcome to the world of Big Data! Hive, Pig, Sqoop, HDFS, MapReduce… Discover how to gain new insight from your data by integrating Hadoop with SQL Server. Join this introduction to fundamental Big Data concepts and terms. Learn how others are leveraging Hadoop and how the Microsoft Big Data Solution fits within the data platform ecosystem.

The other night I was working on some final chapter reviews of our upcoming book Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View and I stumbled across something new in the RTM release of Microsoft Power View.  A new feature called Styles that provides theming capabilities with the views in the report files. Let’s take a quick look at where this new feature is located and what this can do to your views.

Now when you launch Power View in your browser you will see a new tab in the ribbon called Styles next to the Home tab.  When you click on this you will see that you are provided 8 different accent color themes to choose from as shown above.

So what do these look like?

Accent 1

Accent 2

Accent 3

(same as Accent 2 with exception of 1st color)

Accent 4

Accent 5

Accent 6

(same as Accent 5 with exception of 1st color)

Accent 7

(same as Accent 1 with slightly different blue color)

Accent 8

Now the one thing to note is that the Styles will change the colors for the entire view, so this includes all of the items (tables, slicers, etc.), not just one particular visualization.

The other thing to note here is that if you have multiple views in your report file that each view can have its own accent color setup.

So when designing your reports you have some options for colors to select from.  Nothing custom like you have available in Reporting Services reports, but at least you have something unlike say PerformancePoint.

So that is a quick intro and overview of the new Styles option in Power View, hope you enjoyed the quick tour.

If you are looking for more information and guidance don’t forget to check out our book that will be coming out very soon – Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View.

There is a brand new book coming to a bookstore near you – Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View. 

I am very proud to announce that I am one of the co-authors along with Brian Larson, Mark Davis, and Paul Purington.  We are all from Superior Consulting Services

This book is dedicated to the new self-service report authoring tool Power View that is provided in SharePoint 2010 as part of the new SQL Server Reporting Services 2012 integration. 

The book is split into two parts, the first focusing on Power View and the second on Tabular BI Semantic Model development, DAX, deployment, and management.

Included with the book is a DVD that will provide our sample data, supporting files, Power View report samples, Tabular model project files, and over 50 video demonstrations!

The book will be available in June in time for North America TechEd.  We are currently on the home stretch of the book doing our final reviews and we are very excited to see all of our hard work come together.

I want to thank Brian Larson and McGraw-Hill Publishing for getting this put together, including me, and making this possible.

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

• April 3, Chris Price – Data Quality Services 2012
• April 5, Andrew Thornton-Smith – SQL for SharePoint 2010 Farms
• April 10, Aaron Nelson – SQL Server PowerShell Extensions
• April 12, Mike Davis – Intro to IRS and SSRS
• April 17, Max Trinidad – Basic Intro to PowerShell for the DBA
• April 19, Adam Jorgensen – How to manage Big Data, Tips and Tricks
• April 24, Brian Knight – Upgrading DTS Packages to SSIS
• April 26, Thomas Kejser – CAT Tales on Large BI Installs

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? Go ahead and 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.

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up next week. This month we have a fantastic lineup that you will not want to miss. This month Ted Kummert and Mark Souza will be here in-person directly from Microsoft and Microsoft SQL Server MVP Itzik Ben-Gan from SolidQ will also be in attendance.  Don’t forget the new meeting location which is at the Minneapolis Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is TechFuse (where I will be speaking at along with Brian Larson and Jason Strate).

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

Date/Time: Tuesday, April 17 from 4 to 7 p.m.
 
Live Meeting:
• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=F863BG&role=attend&pw=44%2Cj5N%40t7
• Meeting ID: F863BG
• Entry Code: 44,j5N@t7
 
Agenda:
• 4:00-4:30 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 4:30-4:45 : Intro / Greetings
• 4:45-5:45 : Ted Kummert and Mark Souza – SQL 2012 Discussion and Q&A
• 5:45-6:00 : Break
• 6:00-7:00 : Itzik Ben-Gan – Apply T-SQL Magic
• 7:00-7:15 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

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

SQL 2012 Discussion and Q&A: SQL2012 discussion covering the following topics:

• Running your Business and Mission Critical environments
• BIG Data and scaling breakthrough insights throughout your organization
• Unlock New Insights With Pervasive Data Discovery Across the Organization
• Adopting the Cloud on your own terms

Apply T-SQL Magic: When a new version of SQL Server is released, with most of the new T-SQL features that are introduced you can usually quickly tell what their benefits are and what you can use them for. But with some features, it can take some time before people start discovering their true value and what you can do with them. Such is the APPLY operator that was added in SQL Server 2005. Initially it seemed just like an ordinary language element with a couple of uses, but with time people found very creative and interesting uses for it. This session describes the APPLY operator, and focuses on advanced, creative uses.

One of the great features of using PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint Server is the ability to be able to drill down to (or cross drill) and perform additional ad-hoc analysis.  This features is built into the analytical reports, both grid and chart, as well as the decomposition tree.  Here is what the feature looks like with each of these options along with the output in an existing dashboard page in SharePoint:

Analytical Reports (Chart and Grid)

Initial Report	Drill Down To menu	Final Result
Sales chart displaying data by Product Category	Able to Drill Down To any of the 14 dimensions that are in cube	Home Appliance sales data drilled down to Machine Type – unrelated dimension to sales
Sales grid displaying data by Product Category	Able to Drill Down To any of the 14 dimensions that are in cube	Home Appliance sales data drilled down to Geography Region Country

Now the one thing you might have noticed when using this feature is that the list of available dimensions (entities) that are available in the list can become overwhelming at times if you are utilizing cubes that include many dimensions and fact tables (measure groups).  It is quite common that when cubes are setup this way that not all of the dimensions are related to each fact table.  Like if we look at this dimension usage design you can see that there are 14 dimensions and 7 measure groups and that there are quite a few instances where the dimensions are not related to the measure groups.  This can produce odd results based on how the measure group is setup in the cube such as the chart results above after the sales data was analyzed by machine type.

In these cases you then have to evaluate whether or not it even makes sense to include the fact tables in the same cube.  That is one option of course when designing your model, another is the ability to limit the items that you present to your users to help limit the scope.  The way you can do this is with the use of perspectives.  A perspective is a way that you can limit the scope of items that are presented to a user to help remove the clutter of items that are available.  This is subset of the cube and can then be exposed to users to select from so that they can quickly perform analysis on just the items that they need to reference.  Perspectives are not an option to use for security purposes, just an option to use to filter the items for analysis.

NOTE: In Analysis Services perspectives are only available as an Enterprise Edition feature (which is also available in the Developer and Evaluation Editions) with SQL Server (2005 through 2008 R2 versions). Now with SQL Server 2012 perspectives are also available in the new Business Intelligence Edition of the product (for both Multidimensional and Tabular) as well as in the new version of PowerPivot for Excel.

Before we explore this let’s take a quick look at the other type of visualization available for analysis that is provided in PerformancePoint that allows you to cross drill, the decomposition tree.

Decomposition Tree

Initial Report	Drill Down To menu	Final Result
Home Appliance sales amount broken out by Product Subcategory	Able to Drill Down To only the related dimensions in the cube	Washers & Dryers sales amount broken out by Channel Name

Notice anything different here? This type of report has built-in logic that only displays the related dimensions available to the measure that you are analyzing.  Pretty cool.

Ok, now back to our initial issue that we saw with the Analytical Reports.  If we look at the cube designer above and go to the perspectives tab we can see that three perspectives (IT Machine, Inventory, and Sales) have been defined for particular areas to focus in on the items that are relevant for their analysis:

So if we go back into PerformancePoint and if we setup our data source to reference the perspective instead of the cube we can then design our Analytical Reports off that data source.  In doing so we will then be able to limit the items presented to our end-users just like the decomposition tree does so that it only displays items relevant for analysis.

Here is an example of the chart initially displayed and the Drill Down To list based on a reference to the Sales perspective instead of the Operation cube in our Analysis Services database.

Now instead of being presented with all 14 dimensions we only see 11 of them.  In this case the Scenario dimension is setup in the Sales perspective and that is needed to evaluate the Sales Quota data.  We can see that in the decomposition tree that it filtered that dimension out.  Now you have the ability to control what is available for users by the use of perspectives.  These can also be used with out tools such as Report Designer, Report Builder, Excel, etc.  When users connect to your database they can select from a drop-down list and connect to a perspective if you have them defined and also if you are using a Edition of SQL Server that supports this.

As I mentioned in the Note above, in SQL Server 2012 perspectives are available now in the Business Intelligence Edition as well as Enterprise.  You can also defined perspectives now in the new release of PowerPivot for Excel as well.

When you are in the PowerPivot Window you will need to enable the Advanced Mode option in the file menu and then you will see the Perspectives button in the Advanced tab of the Ribbon.  This will only be active if you have data imported into the PowerPivot Window.  These PowerPivot files can then be utilized in PerformancePoint and I highlighted the new features in a previous posting (I did not mention perspectives though…) – Using PerformancePoint Services (PPS) with PowerPivot SQL Server 2012 RC0.

Summary

As you have seen it can be very helpful to limit the scope of items presented to a user for analysis.  As cubes get larger and more entities are added for analysis along with fact tables it can become quite overwhelming to end-users.  We can help out the users by providing perspectives which can provide a limited scope of items that are needed for analysis and that are related.  This can be very helpful and simplify things for end-users and can reduce confusion.  I would highly recommend that before you dive into creating lots of Analytical Reports that you define perspectives in your models.  The reason for this is because you cannot change the data source an Analytical Report is associated with once you have created it.

Happy analysis!

The next Minnesota SQL Server User Group meeting is coming up in a couple of weeks. This month we have a couple of SQL Server MVPs teaming up, Thomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar) and Jason Strate (@StrateSQL), and they will be speaking on SQL Server performance tuning – this is guaranteed to be a fun and interactive presentation (I just have a hunch). Don’t forget the new meeting location which is at the Minneapolis Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.

The sponsor for this month’s meeting is Confio Software.

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

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 20 from 3 to 5 p.m. Note this be starting promptly at 3 p.m., to enable our speaker to catch a flight

Live Meeting:

• URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=JJDQB6&role=attend&pw=4%2B%7C*rDFg9
• Meeting ID: JJDQB6
• Entry Code: 4+|*rDFg9

Agenda:

• 3:00-3:15 : Registration / hospitality / networking
• 3:15-4:30 : Choose Your Own Adventure: Performance Tuning (Thomas LaRock and Jason Strate)
• 4:30-4:45 : Local New Presenter!
• 4:45-5:00 : Closing comments/prize giveaways

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

Choose Your Own Adventure: Performance Tuning (Thomas LaRock, Confio Software and Jason Strate, Digineer) – Life is all about choices, and when it comes to SQL Server it is no different. If you don’t have a methodology for researching questions and resolving issues then you need to get one, and soon. Join Microsoft MVPs Jason Strate from Digineer and Thomas LaRock from Confio Software as they help guide you while YOU make the choices in this interactive performance tuning adventure.

If you want to check out the upcoming PASSMN meetings that are planned check out Steve Hughes post here – PASSMN Rocks 2012!  You definitely don’t want to miss next month’s, great lineup.

Yesterday I was at the Minneapolis Microsoft Technology Center and I received the news short after 11 a.m. that SQL Server 2012 went RTM and the evaluation version is available to download.

The SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch is going on today – http://sqlserverlaunch.com, so don’t miss out on that. I heard that over 20,000 people are registered, so this is going to be one of the largest online launch events.

You can grab the downloads here – http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/get-sql-server/try-it.aspx.

On this site you will find the links for:

• SQL Server 2012 Evaluation
• SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack (which now includes 64bit Data Mining Add-In for Office 2010)
• SQL Server Data Tools 

To find out what has changed in the new version of SQL Server 2012 checkout the online material available here – What’s new in Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Also, don’t forget that the SQL Server 2012 Special Ops Tour is going on as well.  The one for Minneapolis still has seats available.  Make sure you register for that today as well – http://specialopstour.com.

Enjoy!

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)

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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

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Hope to see you there!