Jessica M. Moss

Hello, SQL Server 2016 Yesterday, Microsoft announced the release of SQL Server 2016 on June 1st of this year: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2016/05/02/get-ready-sql-server-2016-coming-on-june-1st/ .  Along with performance benchmarks and a description of the new functionality, came the announcement of editions and features for the next release. Good-bye, Business Intelligence Edition The biggest surprise to me was the removal of the Business Intelligence edition that was initially introduced in SQL Server 2012.  Truthfully, it never seemed to fit in the environments where I worked, so I guess it makes sense.  Hopefully, fewer licensing options will make it easier for people to understand their licensing and pick the edition that works best for them. Feature Comparison Overall, the business intelligence services features included with each edition for SQL Server 2016 are fairly similar to SQL Server 2014.  Nothing has been "...

One of the things we love in business intelligence is pretty pictures. We want to be able to show graphs and KPIs that really highlight information and direct people to an accurate conclusion. We also want to be able to show images that help tell a story, such as a picture of a certain location or the logo for a store. Analysis Services provides the functionality to show images, but it’s a little buried. Let’s walk through the steps of making it easier for you to access! Our final product will look like this: Setting up Analysis Services to show the image Let’s work with the AdventureWorks 2008 R2 sample database and Analysis Services cube. In the product dimension, there is already an attribute in the database and Analysis Services cube called LargePhoto with a data type of varbinary(max) . This contains an image that is associated with each product in the dimension. In fact, in the Analysis Services dimension, we can see that it has been set up so that the ValueCol...

When someone is querying a new Analysis Services cube, there is one mistake that I often see made: trying to use a dimension that does not relate to the desired measure group. For example, when looking at the Adventure Works cube, if you try to use any of the Reseller measures with the Customer dimension, you will receive the same value across the Customer members. Because there is no relationship defined in the cube, the MDX query will use the default member for that particular attribute, which, in this case, is the ‘All’ member. It would look something like this: This type of situation typically goes away once a user has learned the new data model, but Management Studio 2008 provides a neat dropdown list to help initially avoid the rogue query. On the Metadata tab, under the label Measure Group, you can select the measure group you are targeting. The GUI refreshes to only show the dimensions and measures that are associated with that measure group. If we select the ‘Reseller Sales’ ...