2012-04-21 (sql saturday 138 sydney) accelerated bi growth with power view and powerpivot

Accelerated BI Growth with Power View and PowerPivot Bhavik Merchant Bhavik.merchant@csg.com.au

@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!