October 17, 2013 at 7:18 am
My company would like to try Performance Point 2010. We already have a large SharePoint 2010 farm.
The SharePoint Administrator said he thought SQL "Enterprise" 2008 R2 maybe a requirement for Performance Point (or SSAS). Can anyone confirm or deny whether
SQL Enterprise is required - we just want to demo a few reports to Sales Team.
SQL Enterprise is very expensive $30K. We would like to use either SQL Standard or SQL BI 2008 R2 rather than SQL Enterprise 2008 R2.
The administrator told me to research.
October 17, 2013 at 7:35 am
Performance Point is a SharePoint feature, not a SQL Server one (also not from SSRS), so I believe Entrerprise is not needed. (can't find documentation though that backs this up).
You might want to check the edition of SharePoint though, you might need Enterprise there.
ps: there's no SQL 2008 BI editon. The BI edition was introduced with SQL Server 2012.
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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
October 17, 2013 at 8:39 am
Okay, Thank you for the reply. We did confirm that a Performance Point Install requires SQL 2008 Standard, but there is a catch ...
You may need POWERPIVOT which is an SQL 2008 Enterprise feature. But SQL Enterprise is not required to install and evaluate Performance Point 2010 feature. There are a few other enterprise features that are useful for data cube performance too: pre-fetching and cube write back.
So, the answer to the question is Yes and No, depending on how many cubes and users you have in production.
October 17, 2013 at 8:47 am
I came across this white paper published by Microsoft:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc990273(v=office.14).aspx
It looks like in order to get the full features of PerformancePoint you may be looking at the SS 2K8R2 Enterprise,
Kurt
Kurt W. Zimmerman
SR DBA
Lefrak Organization
New York, NY
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwzimmerman
October 17, 2013 at 10:56 am
brucekoivu (10/17/2013)
You may need POWERPIVOT which is an SQL 2008 Enterprise feature.
I'm very curious what PowerPivot has to do with PerformancePoint.
You only "need" it if you're going to build a dashboard on top of PowerPivot data, but you can demo functionality with regular SSAS.
brucekoivu (10/17/2013)
There are a few other enterprise features that are useful for data cube performance too: pre-fetching and cube write back.
Cube write-back is hardly a performance feature. It allows you to update your cube from Excel.
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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
October 20, 2013 at 10:27 am
Second Question. :w00t:
My understanding is SQL Standard Edition 2008 is just not recommended for Performance Point 2010, due to lack of features and lack of performance.
Is there an SQL BI edition that will work with Performance Point 2010? Price Range? Is it 2008 version or the 2012 version? Can SQL BI edition 2012 be used to host SQL Analysis Services under SharePoint 2010 and Performance Point 2010? Any Catch-22's?
p.s. Koen - Thanks for the info.
October 20, 2013 at 12:59 pm
Typically you would use Analysis Services as a back-end for PerformancePoint.
Unless there are any Enterprise features of SSAS that you need, I would think standard edition would suffice.
BI edition is only available from version 2012. You can use SSAS 2012 together with SharePoint 2010.
Need an answer? No, you need a question
My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
October 21, 2013 at 6:59 am
brucekoivu (10/20/2013)
Second Question. :w00t:My understanding is SQL Standard Edition 2008 is just not recommended for Performance Point 2010, due to lack of features and lack of performance.
Is there an SQL BI edition that will work with Performance Point 2010? Price Range? Is it 2008 version or the 2012 version? Can SQL BI edition 2012 be used to host SQL Analysis Services under SharePoint 2010 and Performance Point 2010? Any Catch-22's?
p.s. Koen - Thanks for the info.
My opinion of the BI Edition features was not real high. It was missing cube partitioning, so we still needed to keep Enterprise.
PerformancePoint was the first round of some integration of the Dashboards and ProClarity tools Microsoft acquired. Although you could build dashboards in SharePoint Std, the Dashboard Builder made this much easier.
Power Pivot has gone through a few changes, and can be used as an Excel Add In too. Starting in SharePoint 2010, you can publish workbooks using this, although the functionality is a bit reduced vs. local workbook. It is somewhat similar to pivot tables in Excel.
This allows large volumes of data to be presented in Excel (100 million rows for example).
Power Pivot is also a Server (tabular SSAS). Be aware that although things are real fast, basically everything is in memory.
In Sharepoint 2013, you get more functionality. For example, publishing a PowerPivot workbook, you can leverage the model in a Visual Studio Project for further enhancements (security comes to mind, as it is not available in plain PowerPivot). So if someone prototyped in Excel with PowerPivot, you can push this to SharePoint, and create a tabular cube from it.
There is yet 1 more version, Power BI. And Geo Flow allows some map visualizations to be easily created.
Sorry if this might seem a bit confusing - some of these technologies have been rapidly evolving the last few years.
October 21, 2013 at 7:10 am
Greg - I appreciate your input, even if it wanders a bit. So it appears you are using SharePoint 2013. Is there anyone who is using Performance Point with SharePoint 2010? And what database edition are you using for the Analytic Server? All I know so far is SQL Standard 2008 is not recommended for Performance Point. Did you put SSAS on the same database server as SharePoint Database, or a different server? And, how was performance and response time? Again Thanks. 🙂
October 21, 2013 at 9:52 am
brucekoivu (10/21/2013)
Greg - I appreciate your input, even if it wanders a bit. So it appears you are using SharePoint 2013. Is there anyone who is using Performance Point with SharePoint 2010? And what database edition are you using for the Analytic Server? All I know so far is SQL Standard 2008 is not recommended for Performance Point. Did you put SSAS on the same database server as SharePoint Database, or a different server? And, how was performance and response time? Again Thanks. 🙂
Part of the rambling was to try and give you a overview.
This would be more important in understanding where things are headed when you upgrade.
Licensing is also a big part.
We had SQL Enterprise, not because it was required, but for the specific features.
Data Driven Subscriptions and being able to partition our SSAS cube were very important.
PowerPivot (tabular SSAS) I think might require Enterprise, but this is completely separate from the your demo description. Be sure to check this for SQL 2012, as it may be different than SQL 2010.
I would stand a cube up on Std, and then see if you get good performance you expect.
Much can depend on both the volume of data, and what is available in the cube.
Note that partitioning by Date is real common in SSAS, for both query performance and loading data / processing the cube. Note that you can have a Dimension by Year, but not be partitioned on the back end by year.
PowerPivot as an Excel Add In, can be used without SharePoint on Excel 2010 or up.
Which actually might be a good platform to prototype with first.
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