Search results matching tags 'PASS' and 'SSAS'

PASS Business Analytics Conference (BAC) Recap

KKline — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:15:00 GMT

The PASS Business Analytics Conference (PASS BAC) is PASS' first foray into an event that is dedicated to business intelligence, big data, data visualization, and business analytics. And it totally makes sense for PASS to move in this direction, over and above the flagship community work centered on database management and application development. Why? Because business analytics is all about how to apply the data being collected and managed by all of those developers and DBAs. And, at the end of the day, how we use and apply our data is really the nexus of its value. That's what matters to business. You can read the speech from the standing president, Bill Graziano (Twitter | Blog), or watch it online at the PASS website.

The day one highlight, introduced by the SQL Server team's best presenter - Amir Netz (Twitter), is the release of a new BI data visualization tool called Project “GeoFlow” for Excel. GeoFlow is a 3D visualization and storytelling tool that helps you map, explore and interact with both geographic and chronological data for visualizing data which is difficult to identify in traditional 2D tables and charts. With GeoFlow, you can plot up to a million rows of data in 3D on Bing Maps, see data changes over time and share findings through appealing screenshots and cinematic, guided video tours of the data. It's really something you have to see to understand – check out the video demo and screenshots below. You can also download and try it out firsthand today. It’s an entirely new way to experience and share insights – one you’ll probably enjoy. For more information on GeoFlow, check out the Excel team’s blog and visit the BI website.

The highlight for me, aside from connecting with so many friends and colleagues in the exhibit hall at the SQL Sentry booth, was the day 2 keynote address by Dr. Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame. Freakonomics is both a brilliant blog and the number one business book in America. His insights are well documented in a variety of places, not just in his own channels, but also in places such as TEDtalks. I'm also really enjoying his new website, https://www.freakonomicsexperiments.com/.

Steve presented an outstanding keynote, full of funny anecdotes and insights into the world of data analytics and interpretation. A couple of his comments really resonated with me which are worth repeating. In one story, he pointed out how some of the greatest insights came from corporate data which was collected incidentally or coincidentally. The data that help provide the greatest and most valuable revelations were from data that was basically a corporate afterthought. Another revelation - he's only now starting to make much use of relational databases. He primarily uses spreadsheets, flat files, and the Stata statistical analysis tool. Another insight, which I've known and proselytized as "the Fresh Pair of Eyes" approach, is that it really helps him to gain insights in a problem by knowing as little about the problem as possible. As it turns out, if you know the industry or the challenge at the core of the problem, you make a lot of assumptions that limit your means of interpreting data. By knowing nothing or next to nothing about a particular problem, you can ask the questions that insiders never ask. Here's an example (not from the keynote though) - let's say you're an energy company CEO. You might spend a lot of time thinking about how to accommodate the expected huge increase in energy consumption due to lots of people driving electric cars. You might tell your data analysts to figure out when and how to ensure peak electrical usage is available at the times when consumers are recharging their electric vehicles. But a fresh pair of eyes would point out that electric cars, in their present form, are a huge energy boondoggle compared to hybrid and plain ol' cheap, high-mileage models like the Honda Civic. Consumers will never recoup their investment in a high-priced, all-electric car compared to a cheap, gas sipping model.

At the heart of his presentation is the fact that data is meaningless when it doesn't answer important questions! Many times, data professionals spend so much time devising elegant SQL statements and clever user-interfaces that they forget about using a fresh pair of eyes when they look at business questions. Our session, Operational Excellence for the BI Pro, focused on the trails and travails of successfully implementing and growing the footprint of a business intelligence project.

In addition, we had a fun and very informative panel discussion breakfast on Thursday of the PASS BAC. At right is a picture of Nick Harshbarger, Justin Randal, and me prior to the session. The audience was very engaged and, despite having no slides, there was a whole lot of wisdom goin' on. The panel included Chris Webb (Twitter | Blog), Craig Utley, Jen Stirrup (Twitter | Blog), Paul Turley (Blog), and Stacia Misner (Twitter | Blog). I served as the moderator and facilitator of the session. We recorded the session, with a little HD Flip camera, and although I haven't checked out the file yet, we're hopeful we can post it or at least a transcript soon.

Do you have a "fresh eyes" story? I'd love to hear it! Post a comment here!

Many thanks,

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!
- Google Author

Discount for PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013 #passbac #ssas #sqlpass

sqlbi — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:02:00 GMT

One month ago I wrote about my sessions at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, in Chicago, IL on April 10-12, 2013. If you still have not registered, you can save $200 by using the code BAC228BL and you should hurry up, because there is another discount if you register within March 15, 2013.

If you are too lazy to click on the previous post, I will speech in two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy
Self-Service Data Modeling

And now that Data Explorer Preview has been made public I can disclose that Data Explorer will be covered in my Self-Service Data Modeling session! I thought about writing an article about Data Explorer, but there is already a good coverage and I suggest you to read these blogs:

Introduction to Data Explorer Preview for Excel by Jason Thomas
Several posts by Chris Webb
Announcement on Data Explorer Team blog

PASS Summit 2012: keynote and Mobile BI announcements #sqlpass

sqlbi — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 19:11:00 GMT

Today at PASS Summit 2012 there have been several announcements during the keynote. Moreover, other news have not been highlighted in the keynote but are equally if not more important for the BI community.

Let’s start from the big news in the keynote (other details on SQL Server Blog):

Hekaton: this is the codename for in-memory OLTP technology that will appear (I suppose) in the next release of the SQL Server relational engine. The improvement in performance and scalability is impressive and it enables new scenarios. I’m curious to see whether it can be used also to improve ETL performance and how it differs from using SSD technology.
Updates on Columnstore: In the next major release of SQL Server the columnstore indexes will be updatable and it will be possible to create a clustered index with Columnstore index. This is really a great news for near real-time reporting needs!
Polybase: in 2013 it will debut SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), which will include the Polybase technology. By using Polybase a single T-SQL query will run queries across relational data and Hadoop data. A single query language for both. Sounds really interesting for using BigData in a more integrated way with existing relational databases. And, of course, to load a data warehouse using BigData, which is the ultimate goal that we all BI Pro have, right?
SQL Server 2012 SP1: the Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2012 is available now and it enable the use of PowerPivot for SharePoint and Power View on a SharePoint 2013 installation with Excel 2013.
Power View works with Multidimensional cube: the long-awaited feature of being able to use PowerPivot with Multidimensional cubes has been shown by Amir Netz in an amazing demonstration during the keynote. The interesting thing is that the data model behind was based on a many-to-many relationship (something that is not fully supported by Power View with Tabular models). Another interesting aspect is that it is Analysis Services 2012 that supports DAX queries run on a Multidimensional model, enabling the use of any future tool generating DAX queries on top of a Multidimensional model. There are still no info about availability by now, but this is *not* included in SQL Server 2012 SP1.

So what about Mobile BI? Well, even if not announced during the keynote, there is a dedicated session on this topic and there are very important news in this area:

iOS, Android and Microsoft mobile platforms: the commitment is to get data exploration and visualization capabilities working within first half of 2013. This should impact at least Power View and SharePoint/Excel Services. This is the type of UI experience we are all waiting for, in order to satisfy the requests coming from users and customers. The important news here is that native applications will be available for both iOS and Windows 8 so it seems that Android will be supported initially only through the web. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any demo, so it’s not clear what will be the offline navigation experience (and whether there will be one). But at least we know that Microsoft is working on native applications in this area. I’m not too surprised that HTML5 is not the magic bullet for all the platforms. The next PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013 seems a good place to see this in action, even if I hope we don’t have to wait other six months before seeing some demo of native BI applications on mobile platforms!
Viewing Reporting Services reports on iPad is supported starting with SQL Server 2012 SP1, which has been released today. This is another good reason to install SP1 on SQL Server 2012.

If you are at PASS Summit 2012, come and join me, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb at our book signing event tomorrow, Thursday 8 2012, at the bookstore between 12:00pm and 12:30pm, or follow one of our sessions!

Meet SQLBI at PASS Summit 2012 #sqlpass

sqlbi — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:11:00 GMT

Next week I and Alberto Ferrari will be in Seattle at PASS Summit 2012. You can meet us at our sessions, at a book signing and hopefully watching some other session during the conference. Here are our appointments:

Thursday, November 08, 2012, 10:15 AM - 11:45 AM – Alberto Ferrari – Room 606-607
Querying and Optimizing DAX (BIA-321-S)
Do you want to learn how to write DAX queries and how to optimize them? Don’t miss this session!
Thursday, November 08, 2012, 12:00 PM - 12:30 PM – Bookstore
Book signing event at the Bookstore corner with Alberto Ferrari, Marco Russo and Chris Webb
Visit the bookstore and sign your copy of our Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model book.
Thursday, November 08, 2012, 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM – Marco Russo – Room 611
Near Real-Time Analytics with xVelocity (without DirectQuery) (BIA-312)
What’s the latency you can tolerate for your data? Discover what is the limit in Tabular without using DirectQuery and learn how to optimize your data model and your queries for a near real-time analytical system. Not a trivial task, but more affordable than you might think.
Friday, November 09, 2012, 9:45 AM - 11:00 AM
Parent-Child Hierarchies in Tabular (BIA-301)
Multidimensional has a more advanced support for hierarchies than Tabular, but in reality you can do almost the same things by using data modeling, DAX functions and BIDS Helper!
Friday, November 09, 2012, 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM – Marco Russo – Room 612
Inside DAX Query Plans (BIA-403)
Discover the query plan for your DAX query and learn how to read it and how to optimize a DAX query by using these information.

If you meet us at the conference, stop us and say hello: it’s always nice to know our readers!

LASTDATE dates arguments and upcoming events #dax #tabular #powerpivot

sqlbi — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:04:00 GMT

Recently I had to write a DAX formula containing a LASTDATE within the logical condition of a FILTER: I found that its behavior was not the one I expected and I further investigated. At the end, I wrote my findings in this article on SQLBI, which can be applied to any Time Intelligence function with a <dates> argument.

The key point is that when you write

LASTDATE( table[column] )

in reality you obtain something like

LASTDATE( CALCULATETABLE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

which converts an existing row context into a filter context.

Thus, if you have something like

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( table[column] )

the FILTER will return all the rows of table, whereas you probably want to use

FILTER( table, table[column] = LASTDATE( VALUES( table[column] ) ) )

so that the existing filter context before executing FILTER is used to get the result from VALUES( table[column] ), avoiding the automatic expansion that would include a CALCULATETABLE that would hide the existing filter context.

If after reading the article you want to get more insights, read the Jeffrey Wang's post here.

In these days I'm speaking at SQLRally Nordic 2012 in Copenhagen and I will be in Cologne (Germany) next week for a SSAS Tabular Workshop, whereas Alberto will teach the same workshop in Amsterdam one week later. Both workshops still have seats available and the Amsterdam's one is still in early bird discount until October 3rd!

Then, in November I expect to meet many blog readers at PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle and I hope to find the time to write other article on interesting things on Tabular and PowerPivot. Stay tuned!

Speaking at PASS 2012 Summit in Seattle #sqlpass

sqlbi — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:29:00 GMT

I will deliver two sessions at the next PASS Summit 2012: one is title Inside DAX Query Plans and the other is Near Real-Time Analytics with xVelocity (without DirectQuery).

These will be two sessions that require a lot of preparation and even if I have already much to say, I still have a long work to do this summer in order to go deeper in several details that I want to investigate for completing these sessions.I already look forward to come back in Seattle!

In the meantime, you have to study SSAS Tabular and if you want to get a real jumpstart why not attending one of the next SSAS Tabular Workshop Online? We are working on more dates for this fall, but there are a few dates already scheduled.

And, last but not least, the early Rough Cuts edition of our upcoming SSAS Tabular book is finally available here (really near to the final print)!

SSAS Maestro in Madrid (July 2011) and SQLPASS in Seattle (October 2011) #ssasmaestro #sqlpass

sqlbi — Thu, 12 May 2011 23:50:16 GMT

In the last months I talked mostly about PowerPivot, but Analysis Services is still growing and a very good sign of that is the number of downloads of The Many-to-Many Revolution whitepaper, who has been published almost 5 years ago and recently surpassed 20,000 downloads. The download trend is a constant line made of tens of downloads every single working day. Considering the technical level of this paper, I think this is a terrific result. Also the sales of our Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services are constant and there is no visible decrease after 2 years. My conclusion is that Analysis Services usage is constantly increasing and its wide adoption is also confirmed by several feedback I receive from several sources.

That being stated, it still makes sense to improve the knowledge about Analysis Services, regardless of the new features that Denali will bring to the table. All the skills in Analysis Services 2008 will still be valid in Denali when it will work in “molap” mode. The most advanced course you can attend today is the SSAS Maestro. The next edition is planned in Redmond, WA (June 13-17) and Madrid, Spain (July 18-22).

I will be one of the trainers of the Madrid edition – you can find more information about both editions, trainers and links for registration in this blog post from Denny Lee.

Looking at this fall, the PASS Summit 2011 will run in Seattle, WA on October 11-14, 2011. This year the sessions will be selected according to the community preference. You can vote the session you would like to see in the final agenda. This link points to the sessions I submitted. I proposed a DAX Deep Dive pre-conference and three “regular” sessions: What’s New in DAX 2.0, Vertipaq vs OLAP: Change Your Data Modeling Approach and Analysis Services Advanced Best Practices. A lot of DAX, but OLAP is still here. It will be interesting to see what sessions will be more voted – I look forward to see the vote result (and don’t forget to vote!).

Multidimensional Thinking–24 Hours of Pass: Celebrating Women in Technology

smisner — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:04:53 GMT

It’s Day 1 of #24HOP and it’s been great to participate in this event with so many women from all over the world in one long training-fest. The SQL community has been abuzz on Twitter with running commentary which is fun to watch while listening to the current speaker. If you missed the fun today because you’re busy with all that work you’ve got to do – don’t despair. All sessions are recorded and will be available soon. Keep an eye on the 24 Hours of Pass page for details.

And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!)

Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation

My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract:

“Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.”

If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did!

Kimball All the Way

There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading.

Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right!

Schema Generation

One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops.

Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services.

If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

Creating a Linked Server for Analysis Services

smisner — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:30:00 GMT

I think I’ve finally recovered (in more ways than one!) from PASS Summit 2010 in Seattle a mere few weeks ago. I seem to be eternally plagued with computer problems at every conference I attend, but always in different ways. Accordingly, I have devised different strategies for anticipating and coping with problems. I foiled this last disaster by having my slides and demos duplicated on Erika’s laptop which I had to call into action literally seconds before the session began due to a hard drive failure, but missed one little detail which was actually a last minute bonus addition to my session on Analysis Services Stored Procedures (ASSP). So it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was a forehead slapping moment!

As part of that session, I told a story of how I came to appreciate the use of ASSP for a client project in which I had to dynamically construct MDX queries on the fly using T-SQL stored procedures and pass the resulting query into an OPENQUERY function. The problem that I had in that situation was the limitation imposed by the OPENQUERY function – I had to write my MDX query in 8000 characters or less! Erika and I worked out all kinds of ways to live within that constraint before we tried ASSPs, but ultimately the complexity of these queries kept pushing over the query string over the limit and thus began our adventures with ASSP. I’ll add a post on this technique to my series on Using Dynamic MDX in Reporting Services soon. (The first post describes the use of StrToMember() and StrToSet() and the second post shows how to use MDX in a dynamic OLE DB query.

I had a few extra minutes of time in my session, so I thought I’d show the audience “the rest of the story” by demonstrating how I could use the OPENQUERY function with the ASSP that I created earlier in the session. I had the OPENQUERY working on my laptop just a few minutes before the session started, but in preparing Erika’s laptop, I didn’t think about setting up a linked server to Analysis Services in advance. No worries – I’ll just do it live! Well, my memory failed me on how to fill out the New Linked Server dialog box in Management Studio, so I asked the audience if anyone knew what to do and the reply I got was, “It’s a mystery!” (It took me a few times to realize that’s what they said – I was suffering from the “SQL plague” and my ears were really plugged up!)

Nothing a little search engine won’t resolve, right? Well, I turned up a few hits (like the Books Online entry Adding a Linked Server), but nothing was particularly helpful for interpreting which parameters are really needed and which are optional – especially when I was on the spot! So my post today is my contribution to resolving the mystery. Of course, now that I’m offstage and working on my replaced hard drive and with a much less congested head, I was able to set up a linked server quite quickly.

To set up a linked server for Analysis Services, follow these steps:

Connect to the Database Engine in Management Studio.
Expand Server Objects, right-click Linked Servers, and click New Linked Server.
Define a name for the linked server, and set the following options as shown in the screenshot below:

Provider: Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Analysis Services 10.0
Product name: MSOLAP.4
Data source: (the name of your server)
Catalog: (the name of the Analysis Services database)

To test the linked server, you can write a query like this:

select * from openquery(AdventureWorksOLAP, 'select [Measures].[Sales Amount] on columns from [Adventure Works]')

A couple of things to note - This query is executed as a database engine query, not as an MDX query. The first argument of the OPENQUERY is the name of your linked server.

PASS Summit 2010: Epilogue

smisner — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:16:00 GMT

Another PASS Summit has come and gone, and a good time was had by all. The song at the opening keynote sums up the experience quite nicely, "Simply the Best." My favorite quote of the week comes from Andy Leonard (blog| twitter) who tweeted on November 9, "#sqlpass is a family reunion. :{>" Oddly enough, Andy is one of the few people that I DIDN'T get to see last week, but not for lack of trying. Sorry, Andy!

As an independent consultant, I don't get to interact regularly with my peers, so I love the reunion aspect of PASS. And now that I've started following people on Twitter, my universe of colleagues has expanded even more, and I was delighted to meet the people behind the avatars.

The joy of PASS is not limited to those of us who have attended for many years. As I was sitting in the airport last Friday, I recognized an attendee who was a first-timer and asked about his experience. He replied that it exceeded expectations. He was so anxious to get back to work to put what he learned into practice. He felt that the value of the knowledge that he is bringing back to the office from PASS was so much greater than the price of the conference. Now that's a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one.

There is so much more that could be said about PASS, and many in the community have already posted their thoughts on Twitter and on their blogs. There has been quite a stir in the business intelligence community this past week about the future of Analysis Services, about which I will comment in a future post. Today, however, I will focus on a few follow-up comments and links to resources related to activities in which I participated last week.

Getting Started In Blogging And Technical Speaking

(Photo courtesy of Brent Ozar)

Who had control of this very interactive session? You'll have to buy the PASS Summit DVD to find out!

I waited patiently for my turn to speak. With a room full of speakers, getting your own turn can be a challenge! I heard a few attendees express concern that they didn't know what to write about, or that someone else has covered the topic. My response to this concern is that everyone has a unique take on a topic, and that's why T-SQL Tuesday is such a great way both to learn and to contribute. T-SQL Tuesday was started by Adam Mechanic (blog | twitter) and gives everyone with an opinion (and who doesn't have one?) or a specific experience to add to the topic. You can see the first invitation to T-SQL Tuesday here to see how it all started and the most recent T-SQL Tuesday posts hosted by Paul Randal (blog | twitter). The best way to keep tabs on who's hosting the next round is to follow the #TSQL2sDay hash tag on Twitter.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to hang out for the entire presentation, because I had to move on to the…

Women in Technology Panel

I was honored to participate as a panelist for this year's Women in Technology luncheon. It was well attended, and I heard so many positive comments after the event from both men and women. I drew inspiration from my fellow panelists as well as the stories shared with me by other women attending PASS this year. You can view a recording of the event here if you're a registered member of PASS (which is free to join).

It's so difficult to say what the right answer is for increasing the numbers of women in technology. The numbers are diminishing at a deplorable rate (as I discussed in a previous post). It seems to me that to foster change we need to start laying the groundwork with our children. By "our children", I mean society in general, not me specifically, although I have tried do my part! On the one hand, I don't recommend forcing children into a career path that they can't embrace enthusiastically. On the other hand, I believe that one reason that girls don't pursue technology as an option is lack of exposure to the possibilities. Lynn Langit (blog | twitter) is a role model for showing kids (not just girls!) how to explore these possibilities through www.teachingkidsprogramming.org. Check it out!

Along these lines, I proposed that maybe - as great a community as PASS is - we should collectively think about what we can do for our kids. Someone tweeted that I suggested we should bring our daughters to SQLSaturday, but actually I wondered aloud if we could do something similar to SQLSaturday that focused on the kids (and not just girls). Maybe we could get some sponsors to help, too?

Demystifying MDX in Reporting Services

In this session, I explained some of the nuances of working with MDX in Reporting Services. I have posted my demo reports here.

In addition, you might want to refer back to some of my recent posts about using dynamic MDX in Reporting Services: Part 1 and Part 2.

If you're not familiar with MDX, I presented Session 07: Intro to MDX for 24 Hours of Pass: Summit Preview which you can view if you have a free PASS membership. MDX is not going away any time soon, contrary to recent rumors, so invest some time learning it if you plan to work with real Analysis Services cubes, which will continue to have their place in the BI stack for several years to come.

Real World Analysis Services Stored Procedures

This topic drew a larger audience than I expected as it's a fairly specialized topic. For years, I never needed to use Analysis Services Stored Procedures (ASSP), avoiding it because folklore said so due to performance hits. However, some things just can't be done any other way and I ran into such things this past year. To date, I haven't found much written about ASSP other than BOL, but you can find some excellent examples to download at CodePlex. Plus I've uploaded the very simple (non-production-ready) C# example that I used in my session demonstration for you to peruse.

What's Next?

So now that I've completed all the training and Webcasts and conference sessions that I've been focused on the last couple of months (with one exception - Delivering Information with Reporting Services, a free Webcast at 12 pm Pacific on Wednesday, November 17), I plan to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. There are certainly plenty of topics on my "to do" list!