How to Track SSAS cube usage by End-User Tool?

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There’s a SSAS cube.

User’s use more than one end-user tool to access the cube.

How do you track the usage by End-User Tool?

Problem:

By Default the SSAS Trace does not capture all End-User Tools like Excel, SSRS, Third-Party Tools.

So what do you do?

There’s a connection string property called Application Name that you can use to capture this information. Once you set it, the application name property will start showing up in the SSAS Trace:

SSAS Cube Connection String Application Nameyou’ll have to modify ALL connection strings used to point to the cube though.

SSAS Cube SSRS Excel usage

Credit:

Erik Veerman

Resources:

Connection String Properties (Analysis Services)

 

PASS Business Analytics Conference Keynote Day #1

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In this post, I’ll summarize the PASS Business Analytics Conference’s Keynote Day #1:

The structure of the Keynote:

PASSt Business Analytics Conference

One of the NEW challenges that Data Pros face today is complexity involved in building a BI solution. Following slides nicely represent the challenge from the Tools standpoint:

pass business analytics conference keynote hadoop

Image Courtesy: https://twitter.com/SQLGal/status/322342662013321216

Microsoft’s Goal is to SIMPLIFY the above situation

NEW Tools:

> Data Explorer (Excel add-in)

> Power View in Excel 2013

> Geo Flow

Key Take away from the demo’s was:

Power View is a great tool that you could use to extract insights from data.

E.g. Insights about Music Charts from Germany:

Now combine the power of Power View w/ the new capabilities like Data Explorer that let’s you find, combine & refine data via Data Explorer.

In the Demo, they combined data in hadoop w/ data in relational sources. This is Powerful!

And Also

The Preview for GeoFLow in Excel was announced!

They had a great demo on a pretty big touch device:

GEO FLOW For EXcel

Sorry for the poor image – but imagine a touch device of that size w/ an interactive data visualization that has 3D geo maps!

Conclusion:

They had a nice message at the end of the keynote:

 

Error in Importing KPI’s to Performance Point 2010 Dashboard designer from SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services MultiDimensional cube

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This blog post is meant to document how I solved an error while trying to import KPI’s to Performance Point 2010 Dashboard Designer from SSAS 2012 Multidimensional cube. The error said “An unexpected error occurred.. details have been logged for your administrator”. Here are the details:

1) few days back, I had solved the error listed here: “An unexpected system error occured…” – While trying to establish a Data Connection in Performance Point 2010 Dashboard Designer –  And after I had solved this error, I got another error and this time it was about importing KPI’s in the Dashboard Designer. Here’s how I was able to solve it:

2) So to view the error I used the SPTraceVIew Tool

3) And via SPTraceVIew, I was able to see the message:

An unexpected error occurred.  Error 47205.
Exception details:
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.AnalysisServices, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
File name: ‘Microsoft.AnalysisServices, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91’
at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.ImportExportHelper.GetImportableAsKpis(DataSource asDataSource)
at Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.PmServer.GetImportableAsKpis(DataSource dataSource)

4) I checked that the Microsoft.AnalyisServices dll was present at c:/windows/assembly

5) What I didn’t realize was that the version number was different. The version that I had on my machine was 11 while the message clearly mentioned that it required 10. Thanks to this tip here: Creating scorecard error

6) So I followed the instructions that was on the MSDN forum thread and installed the AMO with version 10 via “Microsoft SQL Serer 2008 feature pack, April 2009”

7) And after installing the version 10 of the AMO, I was able to import KPI’s from SSAS 2012 multidimensional cube!

Addressing few Q’s a reader had about Google’s BigData offering BigQuery:

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After reading First Impression: Google’s BigData offering called BigQuery , a reader (Shadab Shah) had few questions about it and in this blog-post, I am going to address those questions:

Q1. Any browser based Tool’s to Query data in BigQuery?

A1: They have a Browser Based Tool which they call “BigQuery Browser Tool” using which you can Query Data.

Apart from browser based, there are other tools too:

1) a command line tool called “BQ command-line tool. You can find more information here: https://developers.google.com/bigquery/

2) API. one can “include” big data analytic capabilities into a web app via RESTFul API. (Point #2 content credit: Michael Manoochehri’s comment)

Q2) Where is the Data Stored? 

If i just say “Google Cloud” that would not be a complete answer. There’s a complementary service called “Google CLOUD SQL” and so I do not want you to confuse data stored for BigQuery with “Google cloud SQL”.Theres’ a difference between BigQuery and Google cloud SQL, you can read that here: https://developers.google.com/bigquery/docs/overview

Having said that, it’s stored on Google’s cloud and if you wish to use BigQuery – you’ll have to upload your data-set in a CSV format and if you do so, it’s stored in Google cloud and is ready to be analyzed via BigQuery.

Q3) Where do I find lots of data to play with BigQuery?

Google has few sample data-sets that you can play with:

bigquery sample data

That’s about it for this post. Thanks Shadab Shah for the questions, I hope this post is useful.

How to Include Charts in Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition using Microsoft chart controls

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I recently learned how to include charts in visual studio 2008 express edition. If you want to do the same then you need do following things:
1) Get visual studio 2008 Express SP1 or higher version
2) Upgrade to .net 3.5 sp1 (if you use lower version of .net)
3) Download Microsoft chart controls : Download Link and then install it.

After you are done with Installing a ‘charts’ option will appear in the Data Tab in Toolbox. If you still do not see it you will need to add

1) System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting

2) System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting.

Just right-click pane -> choose items -> select the above namespaces in the .net framework components!

here’s a tutorial after you are successful at seeing the ‘charts’ option. click me .

And Let’s connect! I Look forward to Interacting with you on any of these people networks:

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