Insufficient data from Andrew Fryer

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  • Blog Post: SQL Bits 11 - Notes & Queries

    If you didn’t manage to fight your fight your way through the Everton & Liverpool fans to SQL Bits I thought you might like to see some of the random questions I got asked.. How do I manage SQL Azure? I think the key thing about developing for the cloud is to ensure that your application can handle...
    on3 Oct 2011

  • Blog Post: Installing Denali ctp3–how hard can it be

    l forget sometimes that installing SQL Server isn’t that straightforward, in part because it is now so much more than the database engine, that was SQL Server 7 when I started.  I also think its important that you understand the choices you are making when installing it although many of these can...
    on18 Aug 2011

  • Blog Post: the BI Sematic Model in SQL Server Denali ctp3

    Some sort of semantic model is needed in every BI solution but what is it and why do I need one?  It’s a view of the data store(s) you want to work on for business intelligence which adds additional information that can be stored in the individual tables themselves.  For example how are the...
    on25 Jul 2011

  • Blog Post: Analysis Services cubed in SQL Server Denali ctp3

    I have now managed to install analysis services (SSAS) in SQL Server Denali ctp3 three times to reflect the three installation options that now exist .. The top instance is the table based installation that’s completely new for SQL Server Denali Then I have olap based SSAS instance that I have deliberately...
    on21 Jul 2011

  • Blog Post: KPI confusion

    I saw a discussion the other having a go about the fact that it is possible to create KPIs in a number of Microsoft tools and how confusing that can be and I thought it would be good to understand why there is a choice at all.  Firstly the term KPI mans key performance indicator, I mention this...
    on1 Apr 2011

  • Blog Post: A worked example of using spatial and olap data in Reporting Services part 2

    Following on from my my post on Monday I wanted to show you how to link reports together using the mapping control in Report Builder 3.  This is actually pretty easy to do as any polygon or point on a map can have an action associated with it and one of the available action types allows you to call...
    on24 Sep 2010

  • Blog Post: A worked example of using spatial and olap data in Reporting Services

    In my last post I went through a possible approach for showing spatial and olap data that the RSPB are planning to evaluate, now I want to show you how this might look in an example. First of all an apology, I am not going to pay the £1500 to license UK postcodes as this is just a demo, rather I am going...
    on20 Sep 2010

  • Blog Post: Spatial and OLAP data in Reporting Services

    I spent a very interesting afternoon last week with the IT team at the RSPB to explore what they could do to combine their mapping data with the olap cubes they have in analysis services. The only out of the box solution in SQL Server for spatial data is the map control in reporting Services (in SQL...
    on17 Sep 2010

  • Blog Post: ROLAP dead but not forgotten

    With a catchy name like Relational On Line Analytical Processing, is it any wonder that this technology hasn’t really entered mainstream use. Firstly what is it? OLAP (On Line Analytical Processing) is  a data store organised for ad hoc query and analysis, a good way to think about this is as a...
    on24 Aug 2010

  • Blog Post: PowerPivot management

    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.  As I’ve said before this uses SQL Server analysis services behind the scenes, albeit as part of a special install option.  I...
    on22 Jan 2010

  • Blog Post: PowerPivot is Analysis Services, sort of

    PowerPivot is essentially a way of making an analysis services cube using excel as the design tool. When you use the PowerPivot for Excel add-in, then there no backend dependency, but if you want to save a PowerPivot to SharePoint 2010, there has to be a special installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 analysis...
    on21 Jan 2010

  • Blog Post: PowerPivot is Integration Services sort of

    One of the key problems in BI is getting your data together and cleaning it, and one of the best tools for doing this at scale would be integration services in SQL Server. However integration services is too complicated for the average business user but these users do need something to load and prepare...
    on19 Jan 2010

  • Blog Post: Making MDX interesting

    Chris Webb MVP can, to quote a friend of mine can, “Make MDX sound interesting”.  I have to say when I first when on a course on MDX the tutor went for the “Make MDX confusing and boring” approach. Chris has recently coauthored a book on Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis...
    on7 Aug 2009

  • Blog Post: Excel add ins for Analysis Services

    Excel and analysis services are pretty open technologies so it’s very easier for anyone to grow their own stuff in for a richer experience, and even Microsoft provide things like the data mining add-ins which follow this principle. These add-ins are not confined to Microsoft and they are not always free...
    on30 Jun 2009

  • Blog Post: MDX Analyzer

    Compared to T-SQL and the database engine , MDX and analysis services is a somewhat poor relation and is usually catching up. There’s no resource governor in SQL Server 2008 or intellisense for MDX in management studio.  I expect this is because while T-SQL is used by far more people than those...
    on11 Jun 2009

  • Blog Post: MetaData in the Microsoft BI stack

    Metadata is “data about data” and in the BI world this means two things: Definitions of terms, particularly calculations so that business users can understand what they are looking whether on screen or on paper.  Lineage to understand where and how the data in a report was derived. There are a number...
    on20 Apr 2009

  • Blog Post: Five Minutes of Fame

    Speaking at SQL Bits is a cool thing to do but may terrify many of you.  Part of this is that you are on stage for an hour and that means a lot of preparation, both content and rehearsal.  So one of the organisers, Martin Bell has come up with a competition to gradually introduce the idea of...
    on19 Mar 2009

  • Blog Post: Virtualising Analysis Services

    Microsoft reckon that 7% of workloads are virtualised, so there’s still a lot of consolidation work to be done, but how high up the list should SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) be? In order to answer this it’s important to understand what SSAS is there to do, which is to provide a high performance...
    on16 Mar 2009

  • Blog Post: Licensing and Scaling up SQL Server BI

    Both Standard and Enterprise editions of SQL Server come with a lot more than just a database engine, there’s also a suite of BI tools: Integration Services (SSIS) Reporting Services (SSRS) Analysis Services (SSAS) which you are also licensed to use on the same server as the database engine.  That...
    on3 Feb 2009

  • Blog Post: SQL Server Advent Calendar 8 – Analysis Services Named Sets

    Day 8 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Analysis Services allows you to create a set of things you are interested in and persist this in the cube.  MDX is used to define the set e.g. CREATE SET CURRENTCUBE.[Top 10 Resellers] AS TopCount([Reseller].[Reseller]...
    on8 Dec 2008

  • Blog Post: SQL Server Advent Calendar 5 – Analysis Services Performance

    Day 5 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Over 80% of the budget on improvements to Analysis Services in SQL Server 2008 went on improving performance. The answer was called block space computation and to understand this you should be aware that Cubes are often quite...
    on5 Dec 2008

  • Blog Post: SQL Server Advent Calendar 3 – Analysis Services Backup

    Day 3 of my virtual advent calendar, about stuff I like in SQL Server 2008.. Backing up of analysis services in SQL Server 2005 ran out for steam for databases of about 20Gb, and so you have to follow a different route to back them up (see this technet article ).  The time taken to back up a database...
    on3 Dec 2008

  • Blog Post: Business Intelligence for Small Business – Analysis

    If you have been following this blog over the last few days, then we are at the stage we  know what we want to measure to get the pulse of our business and we have all of that on a scorecard. However just because we are measuring performance doesn’t mean our work is done. What do we do when we notice...
    on9 Sep 2008

  • Blog Post: SQL Server Databases and Cubes on one Server

    I have put Business Intelligence into a number of small businesses and these guys typically have one server set a side for BI, so how do you cram the database and the cubes into one box to get the best performance? SQL Server databases and Analysis Services (SSAS) both love memory, and even windows server...
    on22 Aug 2008

  • Blog Post: Dimension Jumping in Analysis Services

    Every now and then I see an internal mail with a query and I think “What were they thinking?” In this case a customer was trying to build a hierarchy that is built from attributes that are in different dimensions. My immediate reaction to this arises because if attributes (Say A,B & C) that make...
    on21 Aug 2008
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