Power View for Multidimensional Models - Preview

Yesterday the public CTP on Power View for Multidimensional has been released by Microsoft!

In SQL Server 2012 RTM/SP1, Power View can consume data from tabular models, however multidimensional models (a.k.a. “cubes”) were not supported. The Power View for Multidimensional Models CTP addresses this key limitation.  Now Power View users can connect to both tabular BI Semantic Model AND multidimensional BI Semantic Model (cubes).  This is achieved through native support for Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) in Analysis Services Multidimensional models, ensuring optimal performance and functionality.

The SQL Server BI team blogged about it here. You can also directly download the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With Power View For Multidimensional Models CTP.

If you have any issues or suggestions you can provide feedback via MS Connect.

Error on opening a database connection in SSMS

Yesterday I ran into an issue with SQL Server Management Studio (2012). I was using it on my laptop with Windows 7 installed.

Whenever I wanted to connect to a database I got the following pop-up and nothing could be done with the database I connected to. Opening databases or security also gave me the same pop-up with an error in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Platform.WindowManagement:

After a thorough search I came to an MSDN message that suggested the following:

• Try installing the following Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated) Redistributable Package
• Then apply SP1 for Visual Studio.

Installing the redistributable already failed with me so I searched through my recently installed programs to see what has changed the last days.. This monday I installed Vault Client for source control, and after uninstalling this the problem had disappeared. I still don't know why this was happening though..

SQL Server Days 2012

In a few weeks I will be attending SQL Server Days 2012 in Schelle, Belgium.

I already saw lots of good sessions and speakers pass by in the agenda: Jen Stirrup on Mobile BI, Chriss Webb on SSAS, Koen Verbeeck on CDC and SSIS..

Hopefully I can meet up with some new SQL-friends and add some to my SQLFamily :)

See you @ SQL Server Days.

Power Pivot Field List vs. PivotTable Field List

Something strange happened this week when I was giving a PowerPivot training.
The PowerPivot Field list disappeared and the PivotTable Field List came back. This happened after a few minutes after I had made a PowerPivot table in a new document. It seemed to happen just in a moment, not after any particular action. Saving, closing and reopening the document solved the problem.

This triggered me to look at the autosave options. When you create a new document and autosave is on, make sure it saves it with the right extension. In this case, the format of autosave was on OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods). This caused the PowerPivot Field list to disappear and only the PivotTable field list was available.

This can be undone when the document type of autosave is on Excel Workbook.
The autosave options can be changed under File > Options > Save.

Power View in action on Politics

Kasper de Jonge had a blog post to a tweet to this nice video where PowerPivot and Power View in Excel 2013 are used to look at the political landscape of the Dutch parliament over the last 66 years. At september 12 we had elections in Holland, so this topic is quite hot now.

Please keep in mind the video is in Dutch, but I believe it is still worth watching if you don't understand dutch (Watch on YouTube).

More to IT than BI

Well, it's been a while and a whole lot has happened since.

For starters, Nienke and I had a great and lovely wedding! With this wonderful opening dance. We also had a great honeymoon with our sailboat to NP "De Biesbosch" in the Netherlands.

Also some nice things in BI-land have happened:

Office 2013 Preview was released with native PowerPivot and a PowerView add-in. Kasper wrote an excellent blog post about the ton of new features.

SQLServerDays 2012 will be held in San Marco Village, just south of Antwerpen. The agenda is already available with i.a. Marco Russo, Jennifer Stirrup, Chriss Webb and Koen Verbeeck.

Soon more things to follow!

Visio Forward Engineer Addin

A while ago I came across this useful addin for Visio 2010 from Alberto Ferrari. Now I needed it again so I decided to make a quick post for anyone who isn't using this yet.
You can design your database model in Visio 2010 and export it to a SQL-script to create the databases.

It can be downloaded from codeplex at: http://forwardengineer.codeplex.com/