Business Intelligence Labs https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/feed.xml Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:20:58 GMT en-US hourly 1 Format MDX & DAX: web service for formatting is available https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/format-mdx-dax-web-service-for-formatting-is-available Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:08:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/09/13/format-mdx-dax-web-service-for-formatting-is-available/ Hi.

I created a simple web-service that formats MDX or DAX query into plain text, Rtf or Html. The address of the web-service is https://formatmdx.azurewebsites.net/formatter.asmx.

All the methods of the web-service are listed below.  There are 2 flavor of every method - without custom settings(=with default settings) or with custom settings.

  • FormatAsHtml
  • FormatAsHtmlWithSettings
  • FormatAsPlainText
  • FormatAsPlainTextWithSettings
  • FormatAsRtf
  • FormatAsRtfWithSettings

Enjoy!

Nick

 

 

]]> PivotViewer Extension for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/pivotviewer-extension-for-microsoft-sql-server-reporting-services Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:37:05 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/04/29/pivotviewer-extension-for-microsoft-sql-server-reporting-services/ Microsoft has released last year (2010) a new Silverlight control called PivotViewer. This new control helps us to make better use of the growing amounts of information around us by visualizing thousands of things at once in a way that reveals the relationships which connect them. At the heart of the PivotViewer control are “Collections”. They combine large groups of similar items, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, PivotViewer enables users to discover and act on new insights.

Part of the BI Labs, I have prototyped a new concept that couples the PivotViewer control with a utility that uses Reporting Services to automatically generate this type of collections. We showcased this concept at the BI conference in New Orleans 2010 with overwhelming support and interest from our community of BI enthusiasts and are making this demo available here to those that would like to evaluate it in their own sandbox environments. The project is already at CTP2 milestone, used by thousands of people, many corporations using it in a production environment. We also use it within Microsoft (e.g. Xbox, Microsoft Finance etc).

Please visit the BI Labs page of the project - it contains presentation and tutorial videos and a link from which you can download the bits (which also contain a detailed documentation and sample data). The initial blog of the project (where you can find more information about the project) is here.

Please let me know what you think!

]]> SQL Server Data Mining for the Cloud https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/sql-server-data-mining-for-the-cloud Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:19:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/04/28/sql-server-data-mining-for-the-cloud/ Get powerful insights into your data with just a few clicks in your browser - no installation required -  with a set of web services that apply the Data Mining technology in SQL Server Analysis Services. If you have used the Table Analysis Tools for Excel add-in from the SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins for Office package, you already know how to navigate these services.  To explore:
 1. Visit https://clouddm.msftlabs.com/
 2. Click the Load Data button to either pick one of the sample data sets or load your own data.
 3. Click one of the analysis tool buttons (Analyze Key Influencers, Forecasting, Prediction Calculator) and make a couple of selections to get a rich report that provides the analysis you need.

Visit our BI Labs project home page to watch the overview  video and a short video tutorial.

Enjoy and please provide feedback. Also, watch for a follow-up post that dives into the web service API that you can call from your own web or rich-client application.

]]> Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/fuzzy-lookup-add-in-for-excel Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:16:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/04/27/fuzzy-lookup-add-in-for-excel/ Data cleaning is often a big challenge when working with textual data. The Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel is a new tool from Microsoft Research and BI Labs that helps with the problem of identifying and matching textually similar string data in Excel. It is robust to spelling mistakes, synonyms, missing or added words and a number of other data quality problems frequently encountered in the real world. It has support for most languages and works well across a wide variety of data domains. Common uses include cleaning up lists of names, addresses, products or other entity descriptions which contain fuzzy duplicates. It can also be used to fuzzy join two different tables together. For instance, you might clean and augment a table of dirty city, state data with a zip code by matching it against a clean reference table of city, state and zip codes. Give it a whirl and let us know how it works for your data!

]]> Format MDX & DAX https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/format-mdx-dax Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:13:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/04/27/format-mdx-dax/ Have a MDX query generated by Excel or any other client and want to understand what it does?  Try https://formatmdx.azurewebsites.net - a simple tool that formats MDX & DAX queries. There are few options that affect result of formatting.

Feel free to drop a comment to this post with suggestions or bugs or anything else.

]]> Reporting Services LogViewer https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/business_intelligence_labs/reporting-services-logviewer Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:14:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/business_intelligence_labs/2011/04/27/reporting-services-logviewer/ Reporting Services LogViewer Tool Sample is developed in Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in Visual C# using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. The sample demonstrates how to read and analyze the Reporting Services trace logs and the Report Server execution log data. The sample does the following:

  • Trace logs record report execution activity and the environment variables that are in effect during report processing. Errors and exceptions are also entered into trace logs. The sample helps us identify the frequency of the errors and exceptions logged in the trace logs.
  • Provide tips to fix any errors logged in Logfiles.
  • Describe the ExecutionLog columns, with tips on how to interpret values.
  • Interpret the ExecutionLog2.AdditionalInfo and some interesting pieces of information it provides.
  • Provide tips to analyze ExecutionLog2 information.
  • Provide tips to optimize reports.

You can download this tool from: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=fd9031c2-2261-41f2-bf8e-fa1a00021450

System Requirements

  • Supported Operating Systems  :  Windows 7;Windows 7 Service Pack 1;Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2;Windows Server 2008;Windows Server 2008 R2;Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1;Windows Vista Service Pack 1;Windows XP Service Pack 3
  • Framework:  .NET Framework 4.0
  • Supported SQL Server versions:  SQL Server 2005;SQL Server 2008;SQL Server 2008 R2
  • Supported Architectures:  32-Bit (x86); 64-Bit (x64)

Using Reporting Services Diagnostic Tool Sample

After building the sample application, you can use the sample to view and analyze the Report Server Service Trace Log and Report Server Execution Log that is useful if you are debugging an application or investigating an issue or event.

Reporting services trace logs:

  1. To analyze the trace logs of reporting services go to the Log Files tab.
  2. Specify the path of the trace log files directly, or you can choose the path by clicking the ellipses button.
  3. Select the date range from the dropdown. You can customize the date range for the log files to be analyzed.
  4. In View Details drop-down list, you can select one of the Reporting Services Trace Log reports (Trace Log Histogram And Detail/Raw/Threads) mentioned above, as a mode for analyzing the trace logs.
  5. You can also specify one of the Filters, as mentioned above, to filter the data to fit need and requirement.

Reporting services execution logs:

  1. To analyze the execution logs of reporting services go to the Catalog tab.
  2. Click Connect>> button. The Select Report Server Database dialog box opens.
  3. Specify the version of the Report server catalog databases we want to connect.
  4. Specify the SQL Server Instance name where the databases are hosted on. This will populate the list of databases.
  5. Select the appropriate report server catalog database.
  6. Click Connect. You are now connected to the specified report server catalog database on the specified server. By default, Reports Execution Summary report renders, and displays the data.
  7. To view a different report, select the report from the Execution Log Reports drop down. To filter the data, click Show Filters checkbox, and select the appropriate filter.

Any feedback/suggestions about this tool is highly appreciated!!

 

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