Tag: Data Viz

Power BI, Power BI Service, SQL Server Reporting Services - SSRS

SSRS 2016 and Power BI

SSRS 2016 and Power BI

Without a doubt SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is one of the most powerful reporting tools for several years. There are tons of features that you can use to make a report that suits your customers’ needs. Despite programmability and extensibility are key strengths of Reporting Services platform when it comes to creating dashboards, SSRS has absolutely nothing to offer as SSRS is a report authoring tool. So it never supposed to offer dashboards. In old days we could create web parts in SharePoint or we could install Performance Point and include SSRS reports in Performance Point dashboards. But, setting up and implementing dashboards in SharePoint/Performance Point was always a painful job. Happily with the new version of SQL Server 2016 we are able to pin visuals from existing on-prem SSRS reports to a Power BI dashboard. In this article I explain how SSRS 2016 and Power BI integration works.

Requirements

When you meet the above requirements you can pin visuals from existing SSRS reports to Power BI or you can create brand new reports and pin the visuals to Power BI.

Note: You can only pin report visuals to Power BI that means you won’t be able to pin tables and matrix to Power BI.

Note: If you don’t want to install the developer edition of SQL Server 2016 OR for any reason you cannot use the developer edition, don’t worry, the functionality I’m going to explain is available in other editions of SQL Server 2016. Indeed, the only editions that doesn’t support SSRS integration with Power BI are “Express Edition” and ” Express with Tools” editions. Check this out for more information.

Register SSRS with Power BI

After installing SQL Server you need to configure Reporting Services. As configuring Reporting Services is out of scope I leave it to you.

Note: At the time of writing this article I was using SQL Server 2016 CTP3. The same principles apply to SQL Server 2016.

  • Open “Reporting Services Configuration Manager”
  • Enter the “Server Name” and “Reporting Services Instance” then click “Connect”

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Azure, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Pass Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Service, Presentations

Webinar: Visualising Your Azure SQL Data Warehouse with Power BI

Pass BI Virtual Chapter Visualizing Azure SQL Data Warehouse Power BI

It’s such an honor that I’m invited to speak in Pass Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter webinar which will be held on 23 Jan 2016.  I would be very happy to have you all in the webinar.

You can register here.

You can register and subscribe for Pass upcoming events here.

Agenda:

  1. Introduction to Power BI
  2. Introduction to Azure SQL Data Warehouse
  3. Requirements
  4. Demo
    • Azure SQL Data Warehouse Installation/Configuration
    • Connecting Directly from Azure SQL Data Warehouse to Power BI Service
    • Creating Simple Reports on Power BI Service
    • Visualising Azure SQL Data Warehouse Using Power BI Desktop
  5. Conclusion

Continue reading “Webinar: Visualising Your Azure SQL Data Warehouse with Power BI” →

Azure, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Power BI, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Web App

Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Power BI

Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Power BI

Without a doubt cloud computing is going to change the future of data analytics and data visualisation very significantly. Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse recently released for public preview. Combining Power BI as a powerful data visualisation tool with Azure SQL Data Warehouse will give the users the ability to see data insights of their data stored in Azure Data Warehouse very easily. In this post I explain how to install Azure SQL Data Warehouse and the the way it works with Power BI. Before going any further I’d like to have a look at the Azure SQL Data Warehouse very briefly.

What Is Azure SQL Data Warehouse?

Based on Microsoft documentation a SQL Data Warehouse is

“Azure SQL Data Warehouse is an enterprise-class distributed database capable of processing petabyte volumes of relational and non-relational data.”

Azure SQL Data Warehouse supports stored procedures, user-defined functions, indexes and collations. It uses columnstore index technology which significantly improves query performance as well as getting you up to 5 times compression in compare with traditional row based indexing.

I leave it to you learn more about Azure SQL Data Warehouse. But, it is important to keep in mind that there are some features like primary keys and foreign keys that are NOT supported in Azure SQL Data Warehouse which affect the way we use Power BI as a data visualisation tool over Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Without primary keys and foreign keys there is no physical relationships between the tables so Power BI service cannot detect any relationships by itself. There is a workaround for this that we can create some SQL views in Azure side to make it work. This can be an expensive solution. The other way is to load the data warehouse into a Power BI Desktop model which can detect the relationships automatically.

Now you know a bit bout Azure SQL Data Warehouse let’s get back to the subject and talk more about Power BI and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

First things first. You need to have a Microsoft Azure subscription. If you don’t already have it you can use it for a one month trial here. You’ll also get $250 credit. But, remember that if you succeed the $250 in less than a month then you’ll need to pay for it if you want to use it longer.

Install Azure SQL Data Warehouse

After you get your Azure subscription, login to your account and you should see a dashboard like this

Install Azure SQL Data Warehouse

I’m not going to explain the above dashboard as it is out of scope of this article.

  • Click New

Install Azure SQL Data Warehouse 01

  • Click “Data + Storage” then click “SQL Data Ware House”

Install Azure SQL Data Warehouse 02

  • Enter a name for your database
  • Select a performance value

Continue reading “Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Power BI” →