Bee Eye - Iman Eftekhari's BI Blog

BI Seminar

2009-05-12T22:06:00.010+10:00

"BI for managers" seminar was successfully held by BI Solutions in Simorgh hotel, Tehran on 22 April 2009.

The aim of this seminar was to introduce Business Intelligence to Iranian managers and show how BI (and Microsoft BI in particular) can deliver critical information to support timely and informed decisions.

More than 60 people from over 20 different companies attended, including representatives from National Oil Company, National Gas Company, National Statistics Org, Iran Khodro and SAIPA which are the largest automotive companies in Iran, and other large organisatons.

The program started with an introductory presentation from me, then Dr Abdollah Zadeh from Amir Kabir University (I can call him "the father of BI in Iran") expanded the subject with his presentation about "BI, Why, How?", then Danial Moazen discussed about problems and challenges that may arise in BI projects.

The event continued with a presentation by Neo Farvashan (MVP) about MOSS and BI, after that I introduced Microsoft BI followed by a demo on MS BI capabilities (PPS Scorecards and dashboards) to provide performance management. At the end I spoke about "implementation of BI solutions" and finished it with Q&A.

I believe it was a very successful event and I would like to thank my friends at BI Solutions and Fanafzar, especially Amir Fassihi who supported me on organising this event.

New MS BI Burger - Delivering BI to everyone in the organization

2009-03-11T16:07:00.008+11:00

After Microsoft announced that Office PPS 2007 would be folded into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise 14 - which was officially death of PerfomancePoint Server - there's been slight changes on the famous "Microsoft BI Burger".

The new burger was designed to deliver Business Intelligence to the masses via SharePoint based under idea of "Delivering BI to everyone in the organization".

Farewell PPS!

2009-01-27T12:08:00.003+11:00

"There will be no future version of PerformancePoint Server."

Microsoft will consolidate PerformancePoint Server (PPS) with its scorecards, dashboards, and analytic capabilities into SharePoint as "PerformancePoint Services" with the release of SharePoint 14 in late 2009.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-bi-strategy-update.aspx

Not a good news at all for MS BI world! I'm not surprised about "Planning" module as I believe it was NOT successful, but embedding "Monitoring & Analytics" into SharePoint, mmmmmmm?!

Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2009

2009-01-23T11:34:00.004+11:00

Gartner is an information technology research and advisory firm which provides research analysis and advice for IT professionals, technology companies and the investment community.

The "Magic Quadrant for BI" by Gartner, presents a global view of Gartner's opinion of the main software vendors that should be considered by organizations seeking to develop business intelligence (BI) applications.

See the full article here: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/sas/vol5/article8/article8.html

Tips for gathering "Business Requirements" in a BI project.

2009-01-03T22:07:00.011+11:00

In my opinion the most important and challenging aspect of a BI project is to understand the business requirements. Majority of BI projects failures are due to lack of understanding the business. This lack is primarily due to BI being thought as an IT project, instead of being a business project with IT as one of the enablers.

It's very important to find out "what they need" and not just focus on "what they want". The most effective way of doing that is by "face to face" meetings with managers, business users and IT people. The goal of a requirements interview is to ask questions in order to discover unknown frontiers. Think of it as a one-hour immersion to better understand what business people do and why. How do they make decisions today, and how do they want to be making decisions in the future? First ask interviewees about their roles and responsibilities to get them engaged and from there, cover the following areas:

What are the key business objectives?
For each objective, ask about measures for success to learn more about key metrics and business dimensions.
What roles do data and analysis play in achieving goals? Alternatively, how would better access and analysis benefit them?
What are the current analysis challenges?

A good question to get the interview started is "How can people tell when you're doing a great job?"

Be conversational: For the DW/BI practitioner, being conversational means putting yourself into a business frame of mind. Learn the language of the business. Don't intimidate end users by asking "What do you want in a data warehouse?" End users aren't systems designers. Acronyms and IT vernacular don't belong in a business requirements interview.

Several techniques can help you establish a more conversational tone:

Learn a bit about the business beforehand by reviewing the Web site or annual report to understand company-specific vocabulary and hot-button issues.
Meet with interviewees on their own turf. Go to their offices or conference rooms, rather than IT meeting spaces.
Prior to the interview, send out an announcement describing the high-level discussion topics and confirming the interview time and place. Don't attach a detailed questionnaire to this meeting notice. You can't achieve a conversational flow if you're reviewing questionnaire results-presuming anyone bothers to complete the survey.
Interview questions prepared in advance are fallback devices, used only if uncomfortable lulls occur in conversations or to ensure key points are covered before ending sessions.
Most good conversations tend to wander, so remember your session goals and steer conversations back on track if you stray too far from core issues.
Stay at a relatively high level in the interview's early stages. Don't follow an early comment to a very low level of detail, only to run out of time and discover that you haven't discussed three other major areas of responsibility with important requirements for the DW/BI effort.

Listen, and expect to be changed: Good interviewers should be seen but not heard — well, at least not heard too much. Strong active listening skills are required.

As you're gathering requirements from the business users, intersperse some data reality into the process by interviewing key IT personnel, especially the master database administrators responsible for operational systems. Consider what the business needs are in tandem with the availability of data to support these requirements. IT meetings tend to be informal discussions, beginning with knowledgeable project team members. Once you start to hear consistent themes from users, it's time to sit down with the data gurus and get into the extreme detail of their source systems. During these data audit interviews, try to understand whether complete, reliable data is there to support what users are asking for.

There are several methods and resources for BIR, one of the best is "The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit by R. Kimball, ...".

MCTS & MCITP Certifications for SQL Server 2008 BI

2008-10-26T17:28:00.010+11:00

Last week I got the results of those beta exams (71-448, 71-452) and surprisingly, I passed both!

The surprise was because I passed them though I hadn't had a chance to work with SQL Server 2008 in a real project before, and that means there is something wrong with the exams that you can pass them based on your SQL Server 2005 experience and just reading about new features of the 2008 version.

But the good thing is that I've passed them and there is nothing to worry about till the next version! The next version of SQL Server code-named "Killimanjaro", will be released in the first half of 2010, according to Microsoft officials. The first tech preview test builds of Kilimanjaro are due in the first half of 2009. It will provide the foundation for Microsoft's first data warehouse appliance, code-named Madison, and a BI tool called Gemini that's being designed to bring a broader range of employees into the BI fold.

A feedback on 71-452 (70-452) exam: Designing a Business Intelligence Infrastructure Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008

2008-09-11T12:43:00.003+10:00

I sat on that beta exam yesterday and here are some points:

There are 75 questions and the time is 3 hours which is a bit tight
Unlike 70-446, there is no case scenario and all questions are standalone (not related to each other)
Many data mining questions. Mostly about choosing the best algorithm.
A few around upgrading and migration strategy
Many questions about new features in SQL 2008, like CDC, MERGE, …
From the name of exam, I expected to see more “Design” related questions, but there were many development questions which I think they could be moved to the TS exam (70-448)

As usual I recommend you to have a look at the topics here and work on those that you are not familiar with.

I must wait for few weeks to get the result. Fingers crossed!

An excellent quote

2008-08-29T13:16:00.006+10:00

"The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. "
- Daniel Webster"

2008 CIO Technology Priorities

2008-08-27T13:29:00.003+10:00

According to a survey by Gartner "Business Intelligence Applications" is the highest priority for CIOs. Here is the top 10 result:

SQL Server 2008 RTM

2008-08-13T22:21:00.005+10:00

Download SQL Server 2008 Enterprise 180-day evaluation from here:

SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack (August 2008). It contains 17 new redistributable and backward compatibility components and add-on providers. Download it from here:

SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack - Aug 2008

Have you ever wondered what the last meeting before a product ships is like? Have a look at inside the SQL 2008 ship room!.

A feedback on beta exam 71-448 (70-448)

2008-07-30T14:44:00.005+10:00

I'm just coming back from MS beta exam 71-448 (TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance). There were too many questions (70!) and the time was around 3 hours which was more than enough.

It was a bit disappointing that not many questions were specifically related to SQL Server 2008 new features -not even 5 questions were specific to that!- so if you don't know much about the new features, don't worry!

SSAS: · many admin tasks · a few MDX · dimension settings · attribute properties · performance monitoring and tuning · using profiler for monitoring user roles · cube processing options · deployment options · setting permission

SSRS: · security · backup the SSRS database · setting parameters · assembly file · custom control · failover environment

SSIS: · a few questions around SSIS package configuration · transaction · a couple of Foreach loop (file)

Data Mining: · a few DMX questions

In total it was not tough if you have passed the 70-445 (SQL 2005) exam, you just need to review the topics from Microsoft website and play around the topics that you haven’t had chance to work on them.

Good luck!

SQL Server 2008 RC0

2008-06-11T15:31:00.005+10:00

Microsoft just released SQL Server 2008 RC0 (Release Candidate 0). It is expected that this will be the final release prior to SQL Server 2008 RTM in Q3/Q4 this calendar year. You can download it from here:

SQL Server 2008 RC0

New for this CTP are the AdventureWorks 2008 family of sample databases:

AdventureWorks 2008 sample database

SSIS: Passing parameters from parent to child package

2008-05-17T13:53:00.009+10:00

When using “Execute Package Task” in SSIS control flow, you can’t pass in any configuration options or variables to the child package. Here is a workaround to do that:

In the parent package, create a variable for each variable you want to set in child package. It must be defined as a global variable.

In the child package, create variables to correspond to the ones you created in the Parent package (e.g. “ChildVar” to correspond to “ParentVar”). Important: assign these variables valid default values, otherwise you will not be able to run the child package standalone.

In the child package, open the package Configurations. Add a new configuration, and select the “Parent package variable”. Enter the variable name you added to the parent package (in our example “ParentVar”). Note that variables are case sensitive. Assign this to the variable of the child package (”ChildVar”).

Now when you run the parent package, it will pass the value of the “ParentVar” to the “ChildVar”. When you run the child package directly (without a parent package), it will use the default value of the “ChildVar”.

A bug in ASP.Net 2.0 Gridview control and ...

2008-05-03T20:12:00.020+10:00

I don’t know why it has to be like this! I know BUG is a non-detachable part of software development and according to a Murphy’s law: "Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found." (!?)

But, when a bug was found and reported to a company like Microsoft, why it should take so long to fix it? And isn't it better if Microsoft add a note or comment in MSDN like: "this is a known bug and here is the workaround..." so that people don't get confused by getting a different result from a sample code? Or maybe Bill Gates wants to make developers more creative?!

To make the long story short, last week after several frustrating hours debugging a Gridview image button which was firing an command event twice, I found it's a known bug in ASP.Net 2.0 and was reported to Microsoft on 2006, and yet to be fixed! The funny thing is it works fine when you have a LinkButton instead of ImageButton.

I finally found a workaround for this:

Put your imagebutton in an ItemTemplate and add:

commandargument="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container,"RowIndex") %>"

The rest is same as other Gridview commands, you need to write your code in RowCommand event of the Gridview and find the index of the row like this:

Dim index As Integer = Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument) Dim myRow As GridViewRow = CartGrid.Rows(index) If (e.CommandName = "YourCommandName") Then ....

Have a look at this page, (a frustrated developer was trying to get help about this issue and answer of Microsoft Online Support...):

http://www.netnewsgroups.net/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet/topic16694.aspx

"First to Know" Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 exam offer

2008-03-24T22:31:00.003+11:00

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/sqlvs/offer/default.mspx

Goodbye SDM!

2008-02-29T22:16:00.001+11:00

Today was my last day at SDM. I'm going to join the "contractors club" to experience a new type of work and want to be an independent consultant in the near future. Hence I'm starting a contract role in Tenix on a large-scale data migration project.

Working at SDM was a great experience for me and I have learned a lot and made some good friendships over the 1 year working with them.

Exam 70-551: UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Developer by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework

2008-02-27T14:42:00.003+11:00

Today I passed 70-551 (a tough one!) and upgraded my MCAD to MCPD. The exam was devided in 3 sections and each section was contained of 30 Questions:

Section 1 - .NET Framework Fundamentals
Section 2 - Core Web Application Development
Section 3 - Application Development Advanced Topics

Time for each section was around 70 minutes which seems not to be enought.Once you finish one section, you can't go back to that section again. Passing score is 700.

The first section was specific to web applications and it has a bunch of question with mobile pages, web forms and new web controls like webparts, login, profiles, site map and master page as the main topics.

The second part of the exam was the hardest one, it was related to framework and types with security attributes, xml serialization attributes, class design and generics in its topics.

The third part was the architecture one and it was lot of logical questions about designing solutions, unit testing, code coverage and integration test and best practices.

Check out this links:

SQL Server 2008 - CTP 6

2008-02-22T17:02:00.005+11:00

The latest Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 is available.

SQL Server 2008 CTP6 is "feature complete," which means that Microsoft won't be adding or removing features between now and RTM later this year.

SQL Server 2008 February CTP 6 can be downloaded from here

Microsoft Positioned in Leaders Quadrants in Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms

2008-02-13T14:52:00.005+11:00

Congratulations Microsoft!

You can read the press release on the news here.

Overview of SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence by Tom Casey

2008-02-11T22:34:00.000+11:00

In this 9 minutes video, Tom Casey (general manager SQL Server Business Intelligence at Microsoft) gives an overview of BI in SQL Server 2008 (code name Catmai)

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/bi/

What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 for Business Intelligence

2008-02-09T22:12:00.000+11:00

Integration Services in SQL Server 2008

SSIS 2008 provides the data integration features such as SSIS pipeline, SSIS persistent lookups, and SSIS data profiling that help you to integrate data more effectively.
SSIS 2008 provides data warehousing features and tools that help you to effectively manage large volumes of data. These features and tools include partitioned table parallelism, query optimization, Resource Governor, and data compression.
SQL Server 2008 provides the MERGE statement that helps you to simplify the code and enhance the system performance. You can also use the MERGE statement as a join between a target that is the recipient of the DML and a source that is the provider of the data.
SQL Server 2008 provides the CDC (Change Data Capture) feature that helps you to insert records, update, and delete activities applied to SQL Server 2008 tables. You can use CDC to store details of the changes in an easy relational format. CDC also provides a structured, reliable stream of change data that can be applied by users to dissimilar target representations of data.

Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008

SSRS 2008 includes the report server that is used to set a memory threshold for background operations and performance counters for monitoring service activity.
SSRS 2008 supports two modes of deployment for report server, the native mode and SharePoint integrated mode.
SSRS provides the report authoring features that help you to manage large reports. These features include Report Designer, data visualization, and Tablix.
SSRS provides the report delivery features that help you to generate reports. The features include rich-text, Office Word rendering, Office Excel rendering, export to Office Word and Office Excel, and report delivery through MOSS.

Analysis Services in SQL Server 2008

SSAS 2008 provides several Cube Designer enhancements for better detection and classification of attributes along with identification of member properties. These enhancements include Analysis Services personalization extensions, best practice alerts, enhanced dimension design, enhanced aggregate design, and dynamic named sets.
SSAS 2008 provides you with the capabilities to can enhance the data mining models by appending a new algorithm to Microsoft Time Series algorithm. This new algorithim is based on the ARIMA algorithm. This enhancement improves the accuracy and stability of predictions in the data mining models.
SSAS 2008 provides several performance enhancements to manage cube space. The enhancements include subspace computation, MOLAP-enabled write back capabilities, scale-out analysis, and scalable backup tool.

Source: MS Clinic 6189: What’s New in Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 for Business Intelligence

PPS 2007 MCTS Exam 70-556 Now Available

2008-02-01T14:56:00.000+11:00

Prometric already listed the exam on its site.

The official preparation guide for the exam:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-556.mspx

MCITP – Business Intelligence Developer (Exam: 70-446)

2007-12-08T17:47:00.000+11:00

Today I passed 70-446 exam. There were 6 scenarios and around 10 questions for each scenario and 30 minutes for each scenario. Not too hard and many straightforward questions if you have done a few projects and are familiar with concepts like: dimensional modeling, cube designing, SCD (especially type-2), data mining. There are only 183 MCITP -BI Developer all around the world up to now compare to 3,232 MCITP (DBA) or 148,244 MCDBA (SQL 2000), that's a very small number. Not sure if that means the MS BI is not popular or it is still young or because it’s a new exam or … (?)

Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide

I found these links very helpful:

Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD)

2007-12-07T17:09:00.000+11:00

There are different types of Slowly Changing Dimension:

Type 1 (overwrites the original information) (http://www.1keydata.com/datawarehousing/scd-type-1.html)
Type 2 (a new record is added to the table to represent the new information, keeps all historical information) (http://www.1keydata.com/datawarehousing/scd-type-2.html)
Type 3 (keeps original value, and current value in different columns of the same record) (http://www.1keydata.com/datawarehousing/scd-type-3.html)
Type 4: uses "history tables", where one table keeps the current data, and an additional table is used to keep a record of some or all changes
Type 6 (2+3+1) (hybrid approach that combines the three fundamental SCD techniques)

Note: SSIS SCD control only supports Type1 and Type2. But by identifying columns with the fixed attribute update type, you can capture the data values that are candidates for Type 3 changes.

Slowly Changing Dimension Transformation (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141715.aspx)
Configuring Outputs Using the Slowly Changing Dimension Wizard (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141662.aspx)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowly_changing_dimension

Slowly Changing Dimension Transformation Outputs
Output	Description	Data flow requirements
Changing Attributes Updates Output	The record in the lookup table is updated. This output is used for changing attribute rows.	An OLE DB Command transformation updates the record using an UPDATE statement.
Fixed Attribute Output	The values in rows that must not change do not match values in the lookup table. This output is used for fixed attribute rows.	No default data flow is created. If the transformation is configured to continue after it encounters changes to fixed attribute columns, you should create a data flow that captures these rows.
Historical Attributes Inserts Output	The lookup table contains at least one matching row. The row marked as “current” must now be marked as "expired". This output is used for historical attribute rows.	Derived Column transformations create columns for the expired row and the current row indicators. An OLE DB Command transformation updates the record that must now be marked as "expired". The row with the new column values is directed to the New Output, where the row is inserted and marked as "current".
Inferred Member Updates Output	Rows for inferred dimension members are inserted. This output is used for inferred member rows.	An OLE DB Command transformation updates the record using an SQL UPDATE statement.
New Output	The lookup table contains no matching rows. The row is added to the dimension table. This output is used for new rows and changes to historical attributes rows.	A Derived Column transformation sets the current row indicator, and an OLE DB destination inserts the row.
Unchanged Output	The values in the lookup table match the row values. This output is used for unchanged rows.	No default data flow is created because the Slowly Changing Dimension transformation performs no work. If you want to capture these rows, you should create a data flow for this output.

SQL Server 2005 Books Online (September 2007)

Usage-Based Optimization in Analysis Services 2005

2007-12-06T17:05:00.000+11:00

You can optimize partitions of a measure group based on the usage. Here is the full instruction:

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/10894_3575751_1