HodentekMSSS: BI

Showing posts with label BI. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Update your SQL Server Data Tools to the latest

SQL Server Data Tools is a modern development tool which can be used to build:

SQL Server Relational DBS
Azure SQL Databases
Integration Service Packages
Analysis Services Models
Reporting Services Reports

You can, not only build you can also deploy SQL Server content with same ease as you do in Visual Studio. If you already have Visual Studio 2015 Community installing SSDT will add full set of SQL Server tools into existing Visual Studio. If there is no Visual Studio, a shell Visual Studio programe will be installed which will have only SQL Server related BI templates.

You will have a stirling exprience if you all ready have Visual Studio 2015 Community which happens to be free as well. This is highly recommended.

This post is related to the July 7, 2016 update. The new version is 14.0.60812.0.

Here are the older versions on my computer:

SSDT_01

If you already have Visual Studio 2015 Community, you will have received a notification which will show the updates available for you as shown:

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

SQL Azure Databases are the core of many Azure Offerings

Including this one announced in December 2015.

As announced today Targit's BI and Analytics platform announced its first offering of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines.

This allows access to advanced data discovery; simple self-service BI analytics; comprehensive reporting with cutting edge dashboards in Azure Cloud. It works using the Bring Your Own License Model similar to its on-premises infrastructure (pay-as-you-go).

These are the declared benefits as seen on the Targit site:

No upfront investment for hardware and software licensing: TARGIT on Azure users are able to scale up or out over time without the typical massive reinvestment in additional hardware and software.
Full support for Azure database technologies: TARGIT Decision Suite 2015 comes with official support for Azure SQL Database, the dedicated relational database service hosted on Azure.
Fast ROI realization: TARGIT on Azure has a rapid timeline for deployment, and is the most cost-effective way to get started with BI. Users don’t need to have IT resources dedicated to managing an on-premises solution to glean problem-solving BI insights

Targit Decision Suite and data in SQL Server is expected to make all of the above possible

If have an Azure account you can create a new VM for Targit quite easily:
Read more here or go to Azure Portal

Their BI implementation overview from an image on their ebook which can be downloaded from their site.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Creating a Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services using SSDT in SQL Server 2012

This post describes creating a SQL Server Integration Services using SSDT that installs with the installation of SQL Server 2012

SQL Server Data Tools(SSDT) installs when you install SQL Server 2012 (even the SQL Server 2012 Express edition). SSDT has all the necessary project templates to start a Business Intelligence project. However it will not have the templates for other language projects such as C#, VB.NET etc.

Launch SSDT from its short cut in All Programs. Review the details fo the Visural Studio Shell from File | About Microsoft Visual Studio. The following window will be displayed for Visual Studio 2010 Shell. The programs not available are all greyed out but you can that all the BI related programs are enabled.

SSIAProj01

The Start page gives you access to create a New Project, Open a project and it also lists out the Recent Projects that you can bring up as shown.

SSIAProj02

Click New Project to create a new project. The New Project window opens. Expanding the Business Intelligence node reveals all the BI related projects that you can create including the Integration Services project as shown. Note that the .NET Framework 4.0 is needed.

SSIAProj03

Click on Integration Services..Business Intelligence ant change project name to August. The default that comes up is Interation Services Project1 as shown.

SSIAProj04

A project is a container to develop Integration Services packages. Integration Services manages packages deployed to Microsoft SQL Servers Databases or SSIS Package stores. Integration Services is only available in SQL Servers. Once deployed to the Integration Services servers, the projects are managed by T-SQL and Stored Procedures in the SQL Server Management Studio.
The project may contain all the files needed for an ETL operation (Extraction, Transformation and Load). The next figure shows the Solution Explorer for a project named August4.

SSIAProj05

SSIS 2012 is based on a project unlike the earlier version which was Package based.
Right click August 4 to access the project properties page as shown (the Common Properties node).

SSIAProj06

The Configuration properties in the debugging mode are as shown here:

SSIAProj07

The Project.params is an XML file persisted to the hard drive as shown.

SSIAProj08

SSIAProj09

The XML file has the following entry:

SSIAProj10

Connection Managers folder is a container for connection managers used in the project.

Similarly, the SSIS Packages is a container of SSIS Packages and presently it has the default package Package.dtsx. It can be renamed to a custom name of user’s choice.

Miscellaneous is a folder for other project related items.

Package Properties

The following components constitute a package and the tabbed pages under Package.dtsx gives access to them as shown. The Package Explorer shows the various folders associated with the Package as shown.

SSIAProj11

At the right extreme is the SSIS Toolbox. If the Toolbox items are not visible this button can be used to make them visible. The Toolbox components should be visible when any of the Control Flow, Data Flow or Event Handlers pages are active.
The next figure shows the Toolbox items available.

Control Flow
List of tasks available, under ‘Other Tasks’ in the Toolbox, with Control Flow page tab is clicked.

SSIAProj12

The tasks under Favorites, Common and Containers with the Control Flow Page active are shown.

SSIAProj13

Favorites and Common folders contain the following Components:

SSIAProj14

The ‘Other Transforms’ folder contains the following components:

SSIAProj15

The components in the ‘Other Sources’ and ‘Other Destinations’ are as shown here.

SSIAProj16

You may note that the SQL Server Integration Services in 2012 is much more feature rich with enhancements when compared to its first time debut in SQL Server Integration Services in SQL Server 2005.

However, the methodology of creating packages follow very similar lines as before.

For a very exhaustive description of the Visual Studio IDE for the 2005 version is available in my book here:

You can buy this book here:
https://www.packtpub.com/networking-and-servers/beginners-guide-sql-server-integration-services-using-visual-studio-2005

or from Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Server-Integration-Services-Visual-ebook/dp/B005CG8IKQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Sunday, May 9, 2010

This blog is mostly about Microsoft SQL Servers

Welcome SQL Server users

I have been writing about MS SQL Servers for several years and I will be posting exclusively about SQL Servers to this blog. I will be providing links to my SQL Server articles past and present from time to time. Of course that includes SQL Server BI as well as SQL Azure.

Here is a recent article that appeard on the SSWUG.Org site that you may be interested. This is about some observations regarding installing the latest version of SQL Server 2008 on Windows 7.

http://www.sswug.org/articles/viewarticle.aspx?id=48766