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Introduction to Power View in SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services (requires full access membership)

Introduction to SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Power View

This 75-minute video, the third module of our SQL BI training course, introduces the newest addition to the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform: Power View, which is part of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services, which runs on SharePoint Server 2010. You will hear explanations of the fundamental concepts of Power View, such as Measures, and you will see all of its key features, including visualizations, in 17 hi-def demos, which you can also practice by using the free Microsoft-hosted labs for Power View. As with all our video content, you can use the very responsive “Jump to a chapter links”, allowing you to follow this video tutorial in your own way.

Power View is designed to be a highly intuitive end-user data exploration tool, suitable for creating self-service reports. The implicit nature of the way Power View works makes it possible to get to know it well quite quickly. Relationships are used automatically, so the user does not even need to know what they are, because they are supplied by the underlying Tabular Model. Similarly, filtering is implicit and automatic, allowing the user just to click on a data point to filter the remainder of the view, in addition to being able to use traditional filters. You will see this in the video, as well as you will learn how to source data from any BI Semantic Model: a PowerPivot workbook stored in SharePoint server, or a SSAS Tabular Model.

At the heart of Power View lie its easy-to-create, visually rich, and attractive data visualizations. You will learn how to get the data from columns in the model, and additionally, from implicitly or explicitly created Measures. Users are able to experiment with a variety of visualizations—easily switching between them—such as: Tables, Matrices, Cards, Tiles, Line Charts, Small Multiples, and the crowning glory of this tool, the animated Bubble Charts and Scatter Plots, also shown in this video. To help you further, we focus on the individual aspects of building a Bubble Chart, explaining its fields: Details field, Color field, which is useful for categorising data, bubble Size field, and the most important field for animations, the Play Axis field.

Ease of sharing a newly created report is paramount to users. First, you will see how to save a Power View RDLX file to a SharePoint Server PowerPivot Gallery, which is a great place for them, as it shows a detailed, page-by-page preview of the finished report. However, it is saving to Microsoft PowerPoint that can enable the fastest adoption of Power View in your organisation. PowerPoint is particularly suited for story-telling with data. Each PowerPoint slide is just another View in Power View, presenting yet another chapter in your story, and you will see how to do that in this video.

  • 18 April 2012
  • 958 views

Apache Hadoop, Big Data, Microsoft

Apache Hadoop technologies integrate with the entire Microsoft Application Platform on many levels. The purpose of this article is to outline some of those integration points, and to outline the possibilities of solutions and applications that this combination enables. Rafal discusses the business potential of this technology in some detail, focussing on both already-tested, and the more future-oriented applications, at all times trying to answer the question “Why should we use Apache Hadoop in conjunction with the Microsoft platform?”.

Introduction to BI Semantic Model & SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services (requires full access membership)

Using SQL Server Data Tools to Create a New Tabular Project

The fourth module of this course focuses on the new BI Semantic Model (BISM), and its implementation as a tabular model hosted by SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services (SSAS) Tabular Mode. This 1 hour 20 minutes video includes discussions, such as: “How should I build my BI Semantic Model tabular project?”, slides, diagrams, and an in-depth, 35 minute demo block, showing you key principles in 13 detailed, hi-res demonstrations, which you can select, follow, pause, and repeat at will, by using “Jump to a chapter” links, shown on the right.

At the heart of BI Semantic Model is the freedom to power any analytical user experience by using any analytical data storage, and so breaking away from a traditional dependency of user tools on a specific analytical back-end. For example, drill-through and hierarchical advantages of multidimensional analysis used to require you to build and maintain cubes, a complex task. With BISM, it is now, at last, possible to have the benefits of multidimensional analysis using simpler, tabular, relational data. At the same time, you can use the newest, tabular tools such as SSRS Power View, while still using traditional cubes. Also, it is now possible to support applications that traditionally worked best with cubes, such SharePoint PerformancePoint Services, without having to build a cube. You could say that you just wrap simple tables into a BISM, and they function like a cube!

In the practical demonstrations shown in this video you will see how to create a brand new tabular model from relational data taken from a SQL Server database, using the new SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). You will also learn how to secure it, using the very new SSAS concept of role-based, row-level security implemented through DAX rule expressions. While security is one of the hottest, enterprise-grade features of BISM running in SSAS, there are several other important techniques explained in this video, including: partitioning data for performance optimisation while processing it, support for large tables (more than 2 billion rows), in-memory paging, SharePoint BI Semantic Model Connection File, and using DirectQuery, MOLAP, ROLAP, and Vertipaq/xVelocity for data storage and access.

BISMs hosted in SSAS also support all features of BISM running in PowerPivot. This means that you can start your SSAS Tabular Projects by importing an existing BISM, as is shown in the demo, and which is likely to be a common scenario for many organisations. Make sure to also watch our video “Introduction to PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012”, as it will prepare you to follow this module.

  • 27 March 2012
  • 1213 views

Introduction to PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012 (requires full access membership)

The second module in this online training course, offers a 1 hour long introduction to PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012, sometimes referred to as PowerPivot “2”. This time, we introduce PowerPivot from scratch, so if you are new to this technology, you will learn how to work and how to create PowerPivot workbooks from your own data, or how to mash-up publicly available data.

Following this, we introduce PowerPivot for SharePoint, including the enterprise manageability features, such as the Workbook Activity Chart (sometimes called the PowerPivot bubble chart). After introducing Data Analysis Expressions (DAX), we focus on the newest features, introduced in SQL Server 2012 version of this tool: Diagram View, Multiple Relationships, Hierarchies, Measure Grid and KPIs, Perspectives, and integration with BI Semantic Model.

This module is of importance to those of you who need to model tabular data for analytics, or who simply want to explore a data set, before making a decision if it is worthwhile analysing it further. Also, if you plan on learning about BI Semantic Model later in this series, you need to know enough about PowerPivot, as Tabular Mode of SSAS, and BI Semantic Model, make extensive use of the new PowerPivot features, naturally extending them for enterprise needs.

This video is presented as a series of slides, graphics, discussions, and 15 demos, recorded in high-resolution, so that you can follow the steps yourself.
To make your learning more interactive, you can jump to a chapter that interests you the most by using the chapter markers shown in the right-hand sidebar. Ideally, however, you would follow this module from start to finish, to build a good foundation for learning from the remaining modules in this course.

  • 12 March 2012
  • 1358 views

Introduction to SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence (Video) (requires full access membership)

Big Data

In this first, 45-minute module of our training course introducing Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies, we focus on Microsoft SQL Server 2012. The main objective of this video is to introduce the big picture of Microsoft’s data platform engine, released in 2012. This module discusses its 10 key BI innovations: BI Semantic Model (BISM), Analysis Services Tabular Mode, PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012, Power View, Self-Service Data Alerts, Big Data and Apache Hadoop integration, Columnstore Indexes (xVelocity for Data Warehousing), Spatial Data, Unstructured Data, and, briefly, Data Quality Services.

Through a number of slides, graphics, discussion, and one short demo showing Power View in PowerPoint, you will learn how to take advantage of the newest abilities of SQL Server in your own BI projects. If you would like to deepen your skills, make sure you also watch the remaining modules in this series, which focus on: the new release of PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012, Power View, and the BI Semantic Model and Analysis Services Tabular Mode, each of which present many more in-depth demos—46 demos in total.

A highlight of this video is the extensive introduction of the concepts of Big Data, through the principles and components of Apache Hadoop platform, which integrates with the Microsoft Application Platform in a number of ways. You will hear about those integration points in detail, helping you choose the most appropriate ones for your projects: ODBC or Hive connectors, using your existing logic for MapReduce tasks, integrating with Pig Latin, deploying Hadoop on Windows Azure and Windows Server, and manageability and security using Microsoft’s remaining server technologies, such as Active Directory.

To make your learning more interactive, you can jump to a chapter that interests you the most by using the chapter markers shown in the right-hand sidebar. Ideally, however, you would follow this module from start to finish, to build a good foundation for learning from the remaining modules in this course.

  • 12 March 2012
  • 1815 views

Books about BI

This article lists books about BI, Statistics, Data Warehousing and Management, which we recommend in conjunction with our courses and seminars.

  • 22 February 2012
  • 1899 views

We are pleased to offer brand new PowerPoint presentations from our just-launched BI and Productivity Roadshow 2012, which cover: SQL Server 2012 BI, Big Data (incl Apache Hadoop integration), Power View, BI Semantic Model (BISM), and PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012. You can also find slides from Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar and Roundtable 2011, and from the SharePoint Conference 2011, including keynote BI in the Cloud: Opportunities, Paths, and the Future. Free log-in required to download content.

  • 14 February 2012
  • 2 comments
  • 6910 views

Power View and BISM: A Short Introduction

Power View Scatter Plot (Animated Bubble Chart)

Power View, part of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services, and the BI Semantic Model (BISM) are briefly introduced in this 10-minute video. The demo shows how to create the animated bubble chart (scatter plot) from your data.

PI: Performance Intelligence

What is the purpose of Business Intelligence? Wouldn’t the term Performance Intelligence make more sense, especially if we consider that BI is perfectly useful for non-business domains such as: government, education, military, healthcare, and many others? This article discusses Rafal’s experience working with BI as a tool for achieving better performance, even if that performance is not directly related to a financial perspective of an organisation.

  • 30 December 2011
  • 1064 views

Spatial Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint Server

Spatial Reporting with SQL Server Report Builder and SharePoint Server

Spatial reports can be created using Report Builder, which comes with SQL Server. They execute in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and they can be hosted in SharePoint Server. This video shows the steps you need to take to create a simple bubble report that displays customer numbers, taken from a cube, on a map of the United States. You will also see how to share that report with co-workers using SharePoint.

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© Copyright 2012 Project Botticelli Ltd. Photography © Rafal Lukawiecki. Site by Sick Little Fox.