Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Question

Post reply

Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Siddharth Mehta

Say Hey Kid

Points: 690
More actions
November 24, 2009 at 12:03 am

#214246

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

SBS-291204 Old Hand Points: 379 More actions · Answer 1

Mate, I think you'll find Jamie Thomson is a man... unless he's not telling us something?

Siddharth Mehta Say Hey Kid Points: 690 More actions · Answer 2

I came to know that just before 1 month. But this article was submitted long before that. My apollogies for the same. Pardon me Jamie, you can beat me up for that during the User Group meeting on 26th 🙂

giovi Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 588 More actions · Answer 3

Hi siddarth,

couple of things captured my interest:

- creating stored procedures for reports; is this wise in a MS BI environment? with a datawarehouse and cubes, one of things I found out best to use is a 3rd party report/analysis tool which truly uses the cubes. This saves a lot of effort; there is pretty much stuff, MS gold partners out there, delivering things at the level of pro-clarity

- documentation; although the product is not at the level to show full interdependancies, the BI documenter will be of use to many

- use the metadata fields in the database, as well descriptions in cube dimensions to extract them with automated tools

Siddharth Mehta Say Hey Kid Points: 690 More actions · Answer 4

I agree. When one has the leisure of purchasing licenses of 3rd party tools, one can always do that.

I have just tried to list tools that incurrs no cost.

Also using of stored procedures is/was required in the 2005 SSRS version. Even in DW environments, operational reporting can be a requirement when one wants to compensate for real time refresh of data from cubes. Cubes generally are refreshed at specific intervals, and the data generally changed during those intervals is facilitated thru operational reporting using operational reports right from the OLTP system.

This is my viewpoint. Thanks for your feedback.

giovi Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 588 More actions · Answer 5

Hi Siddarth

When talking about 2005 and/or operational reporting, yes, I agree stored procedures work well.

bella_porter Valued Member Points: 69 More actions · Answer 6

This is an interesting kit! I wonder how hard it is to understand!

Bella[/url]

Siddharth Mehta Say Hey Kid Points: 690 More actions · Answer 7

I didn't get the meaning. If you would like to see something in this kit, or something that you didn't think belongs to this kit, please add your feedback. In case if you feel that this idea is garbage, in that case thanks for reading this article. 🙂

mike_barns21 Valued Member Points: 69 More actions · Answer 8

mike_barns21

Valued Member

Points: 69

November 24, 2009 at 9:42 am

#1083542

I loved this! thanks!

Mike[/url]

SQLRNNR SSC Guru Points: 281334 More actions · Answer 9

Nice Article

Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
_______________________________________________
I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
SQL RNNR
Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
Learn Extended Events

Oleg Netchaev SSCertifiable Points: 5276 More actions · Answer 10

Siddharth,

This is a very useful article, thank you. I do have some comments regarding the Standards for T-SQL Coding document. There is no doubt that existence of such document is fully justified for a successful implementation of any project, but I believe that you should consider adding a small disclaimer after the link to your "sample of one such document" stating that this is just a sample which by no means is intended for anybody’s serious consideration. This is because the sample document is ridden with quite few questionable and even plain wrong recommendations. Your article is read by SQL Server Central subscribers of all levels, and a small disclaimer could be useful. Here is the small list of examples which I believe maybe considered as questionable by many:

"System level stored procedures are named using a prefix 'SP__' (two underscores)".

[p]This is still ill advised despite the two underscores IMHO.[/p]

[p]The comment about the text data types:[/p]

"There are a lot of bugs associated with replicating tables containing text columns. So, if you don't have to store more than 8KB of text, use CHAR(8000) or VARCHAR(8000) datatypes instead."

[p]This is just plain wrong because the page size in SQL Server is 8K, the maximum number of bytes of in row data of a single record is 8060, and while SQL Server engine will allow you (with warning) to create a table which can potentially have records wider than (if you opt for varchar(8000)), maintaining a table like this is a recipe for disaster because this table will be subjected to occasionally (not always) failing to insert and/or update some of its records.[/p]

"IDENTITY columns can run out of numbers at some point, depending on the data type selected; numbers can't be reused automatically, after deleting rows; and problems may arise if you are using replication. So, come up with an algorithm to generate a primary key in the front-end or from within the inserting stored procedure".

[p]Even Oracle developers don’t use this approach any more as they have nextval function to their disposal to retrieve the next available value from existing sequence. With SQL Server there are many different ways to deal with issues such as filling the holes after deletes (if one perceives this as an issue) and setting up seeds for replication to still work flawlessly.[/p]

"Minimize the use of NULLs, as they often confuse the front-end applications, unless the applications are coded intelligently to eliminate NULLs or convert the NULLs into some other form."

[p]If developers are not capable to intelligently code the applications then it is too bad for them, but still DBA should not just nod and start creating a whole bunch of defaults to insert empty strings, zeroes and 9999-12-31s in place of respectable null values.[/p]

Lack of a small disclaimer aside, the article is great. I really like the Microsoft Business Intelligence Project Booster Kit section.

Oleg

Siddharth Mehta Say Hey Kid Points: 690 More actions · Answer 11

Thanks for drawing my attention towards this thing. I do agree with your advise.

I mentioned it's a sample document ("sample of one such document"), and sections of it would have gone obsolete or may be a wrong suggestion.

My intention was to suggest a template or prototype of sections to be covered for creating such document. Next time I would take care of this point. Thanks for the feedback.

Sam Greene SSCertifiable Points: 5252 More actions · Answer 12

The title RSS Scripter.

Should be chagned to RSScripter.

Enjoying the concept so far...

Siddharth Mehta Say Hey Kid Points: 690 More actions · Answer 13

There are 3 typos in this article

1) I have mentioned "She" for Jamie Thomson, instead of "He".

2) In the complexity measure section, it should be "allocating" instead of "allocation"

3) Instead of RSS Scripter, it should be RSScripter. I should have mentioned author Jasper Smith's name besides it.

I am already aware of it. Still, thanks for pointing this out and thanks for your feedback.

tony-591909 SSC Enthusiast Points: 174 More actions · Answer 14

Thanks Siddharth. You're a brilliant young man. Keep them coming. All the best. Tony