Accelerated BI Growth with Power View and PowerPivot Bhavik Merchant [email protected]
@BhavikMerchant
my other passions
• Cricket (Watching), Squash (Playing)
• Travelling.. Anywhere
• Whisky
Agenda
Speaker Intro
Goals
Rationale
Groundwork
Solutions and Demonstrations
Tips/Caveats
Q&A
Did I hear a chirp?
@BhavikMerchant
#SQLSAT138
A little about me..
Background I’m from Zimbabwe (explains the accent?)
BI Team Manager and Lead MSBI Consultant at CSG
Certified End-to-End Microsoft BI practitioner
Microsoft vTSP for BI
Trainer (SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, PowerPivot, Sharepoint BI)
Experience Started in Web Development and SysAdmin
Thereafter, been in BI for about 7 years. SQL 2000 to 2012; MOSS 2007 to SP2010
Presentation Goals
Identify a major issue in BI
Understand problem/solution domains
Learn about new paradigms/tools in SQL 2012
See them in action
Learn some tips
Identify shortcomings and pitfalls
Audience Poll
Roles IT/Infrastructure Data Analyst/Power user Information Worker/End(ish) User BI Professional
Exposure Traditional SSAS PowerPivot (v1, v2) SSAS Tabular Non Microsoft Visual Tools – Tableau, QlikView, BO
Explorer etc
Lets get started...
“If you build it, he will come”
Q: How do you measure BI success?
“Overall adoption has been static since 2008, with under 30% of potential users making use of BI.” Gartner BI Adoption Trends, 2011
Why? Both approach and tools
Low buy-in
Bottom-up approach
Lack of agility in traditional architectures
Adoption Smadoption! What are the trends?
Source: Gartner (August 2011) [2995 respondents]
Just throw smart new tech at users, right?
In-memory
Visual Analysis
Self-Service
Social BI
Columnar DB
Data Discovery
Deliver Us From Evil…
Got superpowers?
Power Power Power Pivot View Point
BISM - The BI Semantic Model
Team BI PowerPivot for
SharePoint
Personal BI PowerPivot for
Excel
Organizational BI Analysis Services
Client Tools
Data model
Business logic
and queries
Data access
Guises…
Its all SSAS! 3 modes, at INSTANCE level:
Multidimensional
Tabular
PowerPivot
Scenario
Assume we are an end(ish) user
We have data models accessible from Sharepoint
We want an intuitive, ad-hoc way to visualise data
1. Toy Sales Data
2. OECD data
Demographics such as mortality, fertility rates
Big thanks to Cathy Dumas for this model
Ok I get it, Power View! Where to Start?
We need one of these in SharePoint to kick off a Power View Report
PowerPivot workbook
.BISM connection (i.e. to Tabular SSAS or PPVT). Note bypass Kerberos
.RSDS connection to Tabular SSAS or PPVT
These are (or point to) tabular models, implying Power View ONLY works on tabular models
DEMO – Start your engines…
Table, Matrix, Chart, Card
New Views
DEMO – Put your foot on it…
Linked filtering, View/Object Filtering, Slicers
Tiling
Multiples (Trellis Charts)
DEMO – Speeding!
Scatter Plot Animation
Life Expectancy vs Fertility
Life Expectancy vs Infant Mortality
Export to PowerPoint
Can Print too!
Development Tips
Power View Explore! Options grey out/appear
Cant convert back from Slicer or Tile
Use Textbox to hack chart title (text, style)
Tabular/PPVT Mark your date table
Use views to reduce dev model size
Workspace db for Tabular (set in workspace). No local storage like PPVT
Excel Advanced Mode
Model Design Tips
Usability Name fields meaningfully, hide keys and intermediate calcs Format numbers in model – saves time later Use Default Columns for Power View consumption Use dummy tables to group calcs Setup Unique Identifier Use Perspectives
Performance Don’t include unneeded columns in model - Go deep, not wide Limit column width = less memory use Avoid high cardinality columns and large strings Pre-sort your table keys where possible
General
Binary data and URLs work for images
Architecture/Maintenance Tips
For In-memory, have memory = 2x size of model
Can restore from PPVT to Tabular SSAS via SSMS Restore, or convert via SSDT
Use BISM Normalizer from CodePlex to diff and merge models into one SSAS database
Tabular databases are processed on a schedule like classic SSAS
DirectQuery is an option similar to ROLAP conceptually. Consider with ColumnStore indexes. BUT, there are hybrid modes and complications
Limitations and Pitfalls
Cant change speed of Play axis
Beware of Interpolation (Cyprus 1960-1970)
Cant change anything in slicers
No custom colour, logos, fonts (except textbox)
View Filters sorted alphabetically by title
Calculated Columns cant be View Filters
Cant control partitions, roles from Excel
Technical Requirements
SQL Server 2012 Tabular SSAS instance
Sharepoint 2010 (at least SP1). Enterprise features turned on PowerPivot Services Reporting Services Integration Power View Integration
PowerPivot 2012 RTM Client
SQL Server Data Tools (Standalone )
Tying it all back together .. !
New tools like Tabular Power View are great and will help increase agility and adoption, but they augment sound BI processes
I think dimensional models are still important (debated) Prototype heavily
Balance needed: Formal warehouse (centralisation, security) vs total empowerment
Plan, Plan, Plan! Understand user base and requirements before choosing
the tools
Resources
Dan English: http://denglishbi.wordpress.com Marco Russo:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo/ Kasper de Jonge: www.powerpivotblog.nl Cathy Dumas on Hans Rosling:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cathyk/archive/2011/12/21/the-hans-rosling-project.aspx
DirectQuery White Paper: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh965743.aspx
Data Viz people: Stephen Few, Edward Tufte, Jen Stirrup
Questions?
Please complete an evaluation form for this session
…and thanks again to our awesome sponsors!