Installing PerformancePoint SP1 on the AllUp BI VPC

June 17th, 2008 Russell

There has been quite a bit of internal discussion here at Microsoft around this topic since so many of us use the AllUp VPC. 

Long story short, you won’t be able to (easily) install SP1 on an “out of the box” AllUp image. Howard Morgenstern, another BI Technology Specialist has created a quick and dirty guide at http://hmorgenstern.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!28A6BE83102A0EB3!279.entry  on how to approach this scenario.

Its not a tough thing to do, but you do need to be aware of a couple issues. Thanks, Howard!

Posted in PerformancePoint | 3 Comments »

SQL Server 2005 Cumulative Update 8 Released - OK with PPS SP1?

June 17th, 2008 Russell

CU8 was relaeased yesterday for download here. Question is, has it been tested with PerformancePoint SP1? As soon as I know, I’ll post more here:

Update (6/18/2008): One of my customers wanted to know about this, and here’s the deal: SP1 got the full testing treatment against CU3, and also a wee bit was done against CU 7. Use your judgement.

Posted in PerformancePoint | 1 Comment »

Installing PerformancePoint fixes on the AllUp BI VPC (Version 6)

June 16th, 2008 Russell

As many of you know, Microsoft has a super-duper-fantastic (and free) VPC that you can download with all of our BI goodness pre-installed and configured. It’s called the “AllUp BI” VPC, and if you want more details, do a bit of reading here.

I use this image as a primary demo platform and have 3-4 different “hacked” versions of it on various machines I run. Because it is a totally self-contained system, this server acts as its own domain controller, which is a problem as far as PerformancePoint Server is concerned. PPS doesn’t support being installed on a DC, even though you can get it to work anyway.

I discovered yesterday that if you do install PPS on a DC, you’re going to run into problems getting service packs and hotfixes installed, too.

When attempting to deploy a particular hotfix I needed, the distro threw this error:

Failed package requirement analysis

Thanks to a couple guys here at Microsoft who reminded me that AllUp is a DC and offered a workaround, I was able to get back up and rolling quickly. Essentially, you’ll just need to run the .msp which is complaining from the command-line with a parameter that tells it to skip prerequsiste checking.

I’m my case, PPLSrv.msp /SKIPREQCHECK=1 did the trick.

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PerformancePoint Server SP1: It’s here! It’s here!

June 4th, 2008 Russell

The wait is over! Download yours now! I’m giggling like a little girl!

Details about the release may be found here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/FX102380591033.aspx 

..and of course, the distros:

Enterprise Version 32-bit: 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=28B1F86B-B7F2-4215-8BC9-8F8507FF8831&displaylang=en

Enterprise Version 64-bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6245C354-9191-4C4D-8C0C-C10D6C778AF8&displaylang=en

Evaluation Version 32-bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6372C24F-67DD-42DD-B034-748907B23420&displaylang=en

Evaluation Version 64-bit:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3ADAC793-DEF0-4BA8-A9AB-228979B8DB40&displaylang=en

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Is PerformancePoint SP1 supported on SQL 2008? No, but…

June 4th, 2008 Russell

Now that SP1 has hit, I bet a lot of people are wondering about SP1 / SQL Server 2008 compatability. In fact, the PPS Help and How To page hints at same, saying (bold is mine):

PerformancePoint Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) includes enhancements such as improved query performance, increased compatibility with Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, additional data sources, and more filtering capabilities for reports and dashboards

So, is PPS SP1 officially supported with SQL Server 2008? No. The product team made it clear that we can’t support a product which hasn’t even been released yet - makes sense to me!  Offical support won’t happen until PerformancePoint SP2 hits (no, I don’t know the timeline on that).

That doesn’t mean PPS SP1 won’t work against SQL 2008, however. The product team did test the products together, and they do get along quite well. (Sorry, I don’t have a list of specific functionality that either works or doesn’t)

I’m writing this before SP1 actually released, so I expect to update this post after I get my hands on the readme.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning data migration tool released

June 2nd, 2008 Russell

Barry Tousley, an SDET on the PerformancePoint Server team has released a tool to help you do PPS planning data  migration.

You can find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FA1C6CAD-45BD-4E5C-A257-4BBA84FA4224&displaylang=en

Information on the tool itself is here

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SQL Reporting Services: The report server installation is not initialized. (rsReportServerNotActivated)

May 28th, 2008 Russell

Yesterday, my buddy Amit Panchal and I were trying to get an x64 instance of SSRS joined to reporting farm, and had a bear of a time.

Because of issues I won’t get into here, we were trying to initialize the server in the “classic” way - meaning we had exported our encryption key from one of the other nodes, copied it to the new machine and were trying to apply it locally, ala:

RSKeyMgmt.exe -a -f C:\Keys.snk -p password!

We kept on getting the error:  The report server installation is not initialized. (rsReportServerNotActivated)

We spent a couple hours trying to troubleshoot this using RsKeyMgmt -j, trying the same thing in the SSRS config tool, and so on. Still, we had no luck.

On a lark, we re-exported the key from the same server as before, copied it over and tried again. It worked like a charm! Next, we tried the old key again, and splat, same error. Moral of the story is that it appears every now and then your key might get munged during the export and/or copy process. 

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PeformancePoint Analytic Grid & localization

May 22nd, 2008 Russell

If you have taken the time to implement translations in your SSAS cube, it is comforting to know that the Analytic Grid can and will display your localized text.

From what I can gather, we aren’t quite smart enough to simply read regional settings on the client (as defined in Control Panel | Regional Settings) and run with them like we can when leveraging Excel 2007. Instead, you must set the language in question in Internet Explorer ala:

Tools | Internet Options | Languages (button)

You’ll need to add the language you want the grid localized in to the “language list”, and then move it to the top of the list. Clear your browser cache, and you should be ready to rock and roll.

Posted in PerformancePoint | 1 Comment »

Speeding up SQL Analysis Services DSV table selection against Teradata

May 20th, 2008 Russell

A couple of days ago I needed to create a new DSV against a Teradata source. I found that the “lag” in the normally light-on-its feet DSV wizard was pretty bad - it took in the neighborhood of 1.5 minutes for the Add Related Tables function to return when I tried it against FactResellerSales (I have AdventureWorks DW loaded up in Teradata).

I was lucky to be in a LiveMeeting with some guys from Teradata who watched me struggle through this process, and they gave me some hints to make my life better - well, my data-related life, anyway:

• Use the .NET provider for Teradata version 12  (I was using the latest 8.1 Provider)
• In the data source for the project, make sure to set the database name you are connecting to in the Database property found in the All properties dialog
• In the same All properties list for the provider, set Use X Views to false

These three changes dropped my “wait time” from 1.5 minutes to 11 seconds. Can’t wait to see if queries against my ROLAP partitions come back more quickly.

Thanks Teradata guys!

Posted in SQL Analysis Services | No Comments »

Does SQL Server Reporting Services execute queries sequentially or in parallel?

May 20th, 2008 Russell

I saw an interesting thread today I thought I would pass along. In essence, one of my colleagues wanted to know if the twenty-ish queries behind his SSRS report would all fire at the same time, or sequentially.

The answer is (of course, we’re Microsoft) “it depends”. Robert Bruckner from the SSRS product team pointed to the “Use Single Transaction” option on the data source properties dialog in Report Designer. If  this option is enabled (it’s disabled by default), then we run queries sequentially. If the option is disabled, we run in parallel assuming we have available threads in the SSRS thread pool.

Interesting stuff!

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