SharePoint, .Net, SQL, MS BI, Collaboration and Gadgets

Error the ‘Time’ dimension was not generated because it is bound to a time binding.

¥ong¥s — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:08:29 +0000

If you come across the error “the ‘time’ dimension was not generated because it is bound to a time binding.” during creating a time dimension in SSAS 2008. Here is the solution:

1. Follow the normal step to create a time dimension in Analysis Services Project.

2. Proceed to configure the time dimension.

3. On the last screen of the wizard, make sure you check the generate schema. This step will immediately create the table in your database.

4. Go through “Generate Relational Schema..” on the context menu of the project will give you error as above.

Hope this helps

Business Intelligence capabilities in SharePoint 2010

¥ong¥s — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:38:13 +0000

Here is a good picture showing all Business Intelligence capabilities in SharePoint 2010. It explains the area of BI, SharePoint BI services such as Excel & PowerPivot, Excel Services, Visio Services, Performance Point Services, Reporting Services and Report Builder. IT also layout application services architecture and type of data sources supported for each services.

Business Intelligence in SharePoint 2010

Feel free to download it here:

http://www.bronios.com/wp-content/uploads/choose-a-tool-for-business-intelligence-in-sharepoint-2010.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fc97d587-ffa4-4b43-b77d-958f3f8a87b9&displaylang=en<-->

Excel 2007 VS ProClarity, Excel 2010?

¥ong¥s — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:32:12 +0000

We often received question from our client about ProClarity and excel 2007. “What are the differences between ProClarity and excel 2007?” In business point of view, it seems there is not much difference. User still can create data grid report, charts, pivot table and etc… In fact, these 2 pieces is totally 2 different monsters. ProClarity is more for data analysis and excel for more for reporting purpose. The complexity to accomplish the same task might be different too. ProClarity can let you create report/chart faster than excel provide all the necessary cube/data source setup correctly. In term of formatting a reports/charts, excel definitely is more customizable. Here are a good blog describing the comparison.

http://dwbi1.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/comparing-excel-2007-and-proclarity/

On Excel 2010, the boundaries between these 2 products are no longer as it is. Microsoft put in a lot BI capabilities in to excel 2010 (such as Decomposition Tree). Furthermore, it seems there is no much info on proClarity roadmap. It might stop the new release on ProClarity and move users towards excel 2010.

Get ready with Office SharePoint Server 2010

¥ong¥s — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:09:02 +0000

Yes. SharePoint Server 2010 is coming soon. Microsoft call it “The Business Collaboration Platform for the enterprise and the web”. Here are links where you can find more about it.

From Microsoft:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Setting up Development Machine:
http://sharepointdevwiki.com/display/sp2010/Building+a+SharePoint+2010+Development+machine
http://nickbarclay.blogspot.com/2009/09/microsoft-virtual-catch-64.html
http://www.synergyonline.com/blog/blog-moss/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=82

SharePoint Conference 2009 PressPass:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sharepoint/Default.aspx

While everyone started to get familiar with SharePoint 2007, now it come the new version. It;s time to catch up and learn again…. ^-^

ProClarity Desktop Professional - The grid column widths are not auto-fitted

¥ong¥s — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:44:15 +0000

The grid column widths are not auto-fitted. For example, column totals are often covered and required manual adjustment as display below:

Desired outcome:

For column or row totals, it is well adjusted to display the figure fully. Or similarly in Excel, by highlighting columns or rows, user is able to right click and adjust the column or row width.

This is the feedback from MS Support, PDP does not adjust column wide for the Grand Total, because it’s bold format. Hopefully next release will fix these minor bug.

ProClarity Desktop Professional Report title missing after change of dimension data

¥ong¥s — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:55:52 +0000

If it is just a change of dimension member data, ProClarity still highlight the selected report.

We raise this issue to Microsoft support and here are the result/workaround:

Assessment/ Feedback
==================
This is by Design.
Workaround: click grid properties, and select Title - check Visible and check Preserve Title, and of course give it the “same” name as the page name.
Then click apply, and resave this page

Hope this can benefit someone out there.< >< ><-->

ProClarity Web Standard issues with perspective map view and decomposition tree view

¥ong¥s — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:16:10 +0000

When a security role (incorporate with SSAS cube security) is created to enable a specific user to view limited dimension member data, the publish page/report view in Web Standard is automatically disabled with the following message:

This page is not available now. Please choose another page.
It is base on a member that has changed or is available.

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue.

I am using “AdventureWorksBI.msi” from http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=4004

1. Create an administrator role and assign a user A into it

2. Create an Australia role and assign user B into it

3. Set Dimension Data security for Geography.Country to Australia only.

4. In ProClarity Desktop Professional, a Decomposition Tree chart as below:

6. Publish this book to PAS. Login using Australia Role member - User B to view the report in web standard. The following error will occur.

7. Login using Administrator Role member - User A to view the report in web standard. It works fine!

It seems like a product limitation. We raise this issue to Microsoft support and these is what we get:

Assessment
==========
This is by design.. whenever a dimension or dimension member is explicitly present in a view, and then that item is missing due to security or because it was renamed/deleted, ProClarity will launch the missing data wizard
The best thing to do is create sets that use dynamic MDX so that specific members are not missing when the view is loaded… an example would be, referring to the screenshots… MDX = All Customers.United.Kingdom, All Customers.Australia, All Customers.Germany… instead of listing each member, do instead All Customers.children

Basically the MDW will fire whenever a dimension, hierarchy, or specific item is missing or renamed… this can be anywhere in the cube itself or explicitly in the MDX for the view because, when you use dimension security, the restricted items are completely invisible whereas cell security… the items are visible there’s just no data there
Sets can be defined in the cube or in ProClarity and shared between multiple views… then the one set can be updated and all views that use that set will be updated.

Resolution
=========
The MDX solution only applies to 2 level drill down. If we have more than 2 level drill down, we still have to fixed the member. I.e. All Customer -> Australia - >Sydney (State). In this case, you still have to use the AllCustomer.Australia.
As discussed this workaround won’t help because we let those power business user to generate their own chart and publish to web standard. They can’t write any MDX to generate those charts.
In this case, you agreed to suggest to business user not to create those chart for web standard.

We agreed that I will archive the case and close it as NOT RESOLVED.

In short, it is not supported in web standard for this case. This also apply to Perspective map view.

ProClarity Desktop Professional - Percentage figure exported to excel turn back to actual figures

¥ong¥s — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:53:08 +0000

Using ProClarity function to change actual figure to percentage in grid and then when exported to Excel, percentage turn back to actual figures

Click OK

Desired outcome:

Exported data from ProClarity to Excel should display the same format, ie, if ProClarity is showing percentage, then when exported to Excel, it should also display percentage.

Feedback from MS Support:

This is by design.
Workaround is to use the COPY feature in PRO and paste than in excel.

Personally i think this is a bit weird since PDP known as a powerful analysis tool. It should able to handle all these minor features.

ProClarity Deskstop Professional - Empty cell does not display 0

¥ong¥s — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:03:11 +0000

In PDP, if the cells are empty value, it will not display 0 automatically:

Apparently, this is cube issue - The value of ‘NULL PROCESSING’ property for the measure:
Find out more here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlanalysisservices/thread/8edf2bff-cc62-4286-90d0-28e957306b86

Proclarity standard - The selected page could not be opened because the cube could not be found

¥ong¥s — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:42:07 +0000

Here is good article explain the error in proclarity web standard.

http://blogs.technet.com/proclarity/archive/2008/04/08/cube-cannot-be-found.aspx