SQL Server 2012 has many new Business Intelligence (BI) features and enhancements.  Here are my top 12, in order of importance:

1. Power View.  A fun, visual, and powerful drag-and-drop ad-hoc reporting tool.  It is a web-based end-user BI tool based on Silverlight.  See SQL Server 2012 (“Denali”): Power…

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PerformancePoint (PPS) is typically used against multidimensional data sources (i.e. Analysis Services), but it does have the ability, albeit limited, to work against tabular data sources such as SQL Server tables, SharePoint Lists, Excel Services, Import From Excel Workbooks, and even PowerPivot (with its xVelocity engine).

Data sources serve as… Read more

I have come across a number of tips while using MDS.  These are tips not big enough for their own blog post, so I list them all here:

• To “hide” an attribute in the MDS Excel add-in, set the pixel width to “0″
• If you make a change outside of…

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As a 1099 consultant, I usually use a placement firm to find a contract job.  I always ask the placement firm what rate they are billing the client.  They usually tell me.  When they don’t, it’s a sure sign that their markup is excessive (but note sometimes they have an… Read more

Having recently completed a model in Master Data Services (MDS), I needed to move the model from a development environment to a QA environment.  Below is some helpful tips if you need to do the same, along with details on a bug I ran across.

Use the Model Deployment wizard… Read more

All the videos for the sessions at 24 Hours of PASS (Fall 2012) are available for free.  Check the session schedule for a complete list.  Enjoy!

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There are four different way to interact with Master Data Services (MDS) to do things such as create a model, load data into MDS, manage business rules, versioning, etc.

• Master Data Manager Web User Interface (“UI”), also called the Master Data Manager Web Application:  The Master Data Manager web application…

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In Microsoft Data Services (MDS), when running a stored procedure to process a staging table (stg.udp_name_Leaf), I received this error:

“Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘Code’, table ‘MDS2012.mdm.tblStgErrorDetail’; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.”

As described in the Connect item udpEntityStagingCreateLeafStoredProcedure Create Code values automatically… Read more

Microsoft has made a big push the last few years to have all its end-user BI tools integrate with SharePoint, which is great if your company is using SharePoint.  Not so great if your company is not using SharePoint or if it is used internally but not setup to be… Read more

UPDATE on 11/28/2012:  I had this same error when trying to delete a model.  Fortunately, SQL Server 2012 SP1 has fixed this bug!

In Master Data Services (MDS), when trying to delete an attribute in an entity, I received the following error:

“Subquery returned more than 1 value. This is… Read more

In Master Data Services (MDS), you can use the Master Data Manager Web User Interface “UI” to copy a version of a model and create a new version of it (via the Version Management screen).  However, you may find the “Copy” icon on that screen grayed-out (although there is a… Read more