Tulsa SQL Server Group

Back in September I had the opportunity to speak at the Tulsa SQL Server Group. I presented a shortened version of the Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 OLAP presentation that I did for the OKC SQL Server Developers Group back in July. Thanks to the 20+ people who came out in sheets of rain. On the way up, I was wondering just how many people would brave the downpour.

I enjoyed catching up with old friends and colleagues and meeting new ones.

Speaking at Tulsa Techfest 2009

I'll be presenting Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 OLAP at Tulsa Techfest 2009. The event is taking place at OSU/Tulsa on Friday, November 6th. More details are available here.

SSAS 2008 Presentation Slides

Thanks to everyone who came out to the July meeting of the OKC SQL Server Developers Group to see me present on Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services OLAP. We had about 25 people come out, including some former colleagues of mine. For those who missed the presentation or saw the presentation and would like the slides, a slightly modified version is available here at Google Docs. (Update: In some cases 2 tries has been necessary for the Google Docs link to work)


For anyone interested in joining the group, check our website out at http://www.okcsql.org.

Speaking this Week

For those interested in learning more about SQL Server Analysis Services, I'll be doing a 90 minute presentation called "Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 OLAP" at the July meeting of the Oklahoma City SQL Server Developers Group. The meeting is from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. at the Oklahoma City CoCo. More details are available at http://www.okcsql.org. I hope to see you there.

Oklahoma City SQL Server Developers Group

There's been talk in recent years of getting an Oklahoma City SQL Server Developers user group started in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. If you live in the area and are interested in more information about the group, please, e-mail sqlokc at gmail dot com. I'm working with some others to get this group started.

ProClarity Dashboard 6.2 and Firefox, Cube could not be found error

I've still got users that are quite happy using either ProClarity Desktop Professional or ProClarity Dashboard Server 6.2 as their reporting tool for SSAS 2005 cubes. For those still using ProClarity Desktop and ProClarity Dashboard as reporting tools, I thought I'd post a few things that I've learned over the past few months.

One item I learned, is that ProClarity Dashboard 6.2 does not work with some if not all versions of Firefox.

I was on the phone with a user who was getting the below message in their web browser:

"The selected page could not be opened because the cube could not be found. Please choose a different page."

The error message suggested that the cube was either not available to anyone or that the user's security was not setup properly. Thus, I checked both the user's cube and ProClarity Dashboard security. The user's security appeared to be setup properly in both cases.

I then checked the ProClarity Event Log on the server holding the ProClarity Dashboard. There was an error with a description like the one below:

"Information. Accessing page NameOfPage ....
from book NameOfBook ..."

Since, the Dashboard page was accessible to others, this message wasn't, especially, useful.

After all this research, I went down to the user's pod to see how she was accessing the ProClarity Dashboard and saw that she was using Firefox. I had her switch to IE, and then the ProClarity Dashboard started working for her.

I have been unable to find official documentation as to whether or not Firefox is supported with ProClarity Dashboard Server 6.2, however, from my experience Firefox does not work well with this product.

FYI...There are a variety of other possible causes for a "Cube could not be found" error in the ProClarity Dashboard. Many are documented at the ProClarity Team Blog.

Microsoft Acquires DatAllegro

The big buzz right now in BI seems to be Microsoft's announcement yesterday of a deal to purchase data warehouse appliance vendor DatAllegro. There are tons of blog posts and articles out there. So here's a quick summary and then a link.

According to Doug Henschen's artcle, Microsoft claims that "the DatAllegro acquisition will accelerate our data warehousing roadmap and quickly take us into high-scale deployments in the hundreds of terabytes."

Doug Henschen has a good article here explaining both the aquisition and the MPP architecture that DatAllegro expoits.

So, if your company is using SQL Server and starting to reach the 10's of terabytes of data, this may interest you.