1. SQL Server and Power BI – Design and Practice Daire Cunningham – Spanish Point Technologies

2. Spanish Point Technologies and Microsoft Compliance Enforcement 2 Financial and Professional Services B2B Connectivity Government / State Agencies & Not For Profit Mainframe IntegrationManufacturing & Logistics Compliance Enforcement Retail and DistributionB2B Connectivity

3. EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) Self-service BI Traditional BI IT Professional End Users Existing Data LOB applicationsFilesData marts ETL/Data Quality AnalysisReports Dashboards and scorecards Provision Analysis cubes Data warehouse Data Staging Spreadsheets Specialized tools IT has been busy keeping up with the growing demand for BI…Harvesting existing data, cleaning it and staging it…To provision reports, dashboards, and scorecards to meet end user demand But business is outpacing IT and end users are demanding agility… Rapidly breaking down the barriers of control with self-service BI! Power BI give users the control to build and share their own analyses

4. OFFICE365 AND POWER BI  Office365 is software-as-a-service that offers Office, SharePoint and other Microsoft products in the cloud.  Power BI is a new set of complimentary services released in 2014 that brings BI to SharePoint Online  Power BI includes existing self-service BI functionality in Excel: PowerPivot for data modelling and Power View for report-building…  …but extends these capabilities with new Excel Add-ins and BI services in SharePoint  The set of tools can be used as a (self-service) replacement for some of the SQL tools or to compliment the existing set  Some SQL technologies are used under-the-hood to bring BI to Excel

5. POWER BI FEATURES Business Processes Optimization B2B Connectivity Process VisibilityEnterprise Interoperability  Power BI includes the following existing BI features:  Power Pivot allows data modelling in Excel  Power View allows easy creation of highly visual, interactive reports in Excel

6. POWER BI FEATURES Business Processes Optimization B2B Connectivity Process VisibilityMainframe Integration Enterprise Interoperability  Power BI includes the following new features:  Data Management Gateway allows remote connections to on-premise data for refreshing of model data  Power Query allows you to easily search and access public data and your organization's data  Power Map allows 3D data visualization for mapping, exploring and interacting with geographic data using Bing Maps  Q&A allows querying of data using natural language searches  Full support for mobile devices including iPads with native apps and HTML5 rendering

7. POWER PIVOT FOR EXCEL Business Processes Optimization B2B Connectivity Process VisibilityMainframe Integration Enterprise Interoperability  A data modelling tool for self-service BI  PowerPivot functionality is now integrated into Excel 2013 as “Excel Data Model”  Leverages Excel formula, formatting and PivotTable knowledge  Uses compression (“xVelocity engine”) to store tens of millions or rows in Excel  xVelocity also takes advantage of ColumnsStore Indexing (as in SQL 2012/2014) to give very fast query performance  Connects to a diverse range of data sources  Linked Tables for easy refresh  Relationships to join data together  Advanced Data Analysis eXpressions (DAX)

8. POWER PIVOT MODEL DESIGN BEST PRACTICES Business Processes Optimization B2B Connectivity Process VisibilityMainframe Integration Enterprise Interoperability  Do not need to follow data warehouse design principals – Dimensions and Facts can be mixed in the same table. However, can lead to performance gains to normalise out Dimensions and is usually good practice  Keep the size of the model down by only bringing in columns and rows you need  Hide columns and tables that are only needed in final set of measures/dimensions made available to report-builders  Set table PKs and group in columns that change with PK – this will prevent sub- totals appearing in Power View charts  Set Data Category properties for columns with geographic or image data so that Power View maps and Power Map will default to best plotting using Bing Maps

9. POWER PIVOT MODEL DESIGN BEST PRACTICES (CONT) Business Processes Optimization B2B Connectivity Process VisibilityMainframe Integration Enterprise Interoperability  Carefully code your DAX. You can write bad DAX that works but is slow just as you can write bad SQL or MDX  Format your DAX using Marco’s www.daxformatter.comwww.daxformatter.com  Add a PivotTable report to start visualising and testing your data straight-away  Add a Date table and mark as type Date to give time intelligence functions  Date table can be from a source (e.g. SQL DB or Excel sheet) or can be generated on-the-fly with code (e.g. SQL or Power Query)

10. DEMONSTRATION Building a model with Power Pivot for Excel

11. POWER VIEW FOR EXCEL  A data visualisation and presentation tool for self-service BI  Introduced at server-level with SQL Server 2012 but now…  …built-in to Excel 2013  Technology is part of the SQL Server Reporting Services  Report elements are connected to PowerPivot model in workbook  Report elements automatically interact with each other  Hierarchies in model can be used in drill-downs in reports

12. DEMONSTRATION Building Power View Reports based on the Excel Data Model

13. POWER QUERY  A self-service version of SQL Server Integration Services  Can connect to a large variety of on-premise data sources OOB  Can also connect to internet sources such as web sites, Facebook, OData feeds etc.  Can manipulate the data when bringing in i.e. ETL  Data can be loaded into Excel worksheets or Data Model  Queries can be modified using the UI or through code using ‘M’ language  Queries can be shared with others in your organisation

14. POWER QUERY (CONT)  Not all sources are supported for data refresh yet – see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2014/08/19/scheduled-data-refresh- update-new-data-sources.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2014/08/19/scheduled-data-refresh- update-new-data-sources.aspx  If using Power BI (i.e. you have Office365) then usually better to start with Power Query against your SQL DB instead of direct connection from model  However, custom SQL statements are not yet supported for Power Query data refresh  Try to finish your queries before you build your model/reports – query updates can break existing reports  Monthly update cycle – no waiting for new versions or SPs!

15. DEMONSTRATION Extending your Model with public Data using Power Query

16. POWER MAP  Create geographic tours of your data using Bing Maps  Tours are saved with Excel workbook but can be exported to.mp4 video files  Help Bing Maps recognise the cities by supplementing the geographic data

17. DEMONSTRATION Tour your Data with Power Maps

18. POWER BI SHAREPOINT APP  Power BI allows the enabling of a SharePoint Online site to host PowerPivot and Power View reports in a similar way to the SharePoint on- premise PowerPivot Gallery  Reports can be spot-lighted by promoting them as “featured”  Models can be refreshed from on-premise data sources as well as cloud-based data sources  View in HTML5 or Silverlight  Extra monthly subscription per user over-and- above Office365 cost but includes Office 365 ProPlus license

19. Q&A  Allows natural language queries against your data model  Matches search terms against model columns/measures but you can also create synonyms  It will choose what it thinks is the most appropriate visualisation based on data types and model settings but user can choose to change  Common queries can be pinned to the app home page

20. DEMONSTRATION Uploading your Model to Power BI and Q&A

21. REFRESHING THE DATA  The data in the model needs to be refreshed either from on-premise data source or the internet  Set-up a Data Management Gateway to provide handshake between on premise server and Office365 service bus.  Comms can be HTTP or HTTPS. See the following article for firewall requirements and best practices: https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/An-Inside-look-at- Microsoft-Data-Management-Gateway-078d306d-2d28-409c-962b-d80b69a1d0b2https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/An-Inside-look-at- Microsoft-Data-Management-Gateway-078d306d-2d28-409c-962b-d80b69a1d0b2  Data sources are tied to a DMG and have connection strings matching those in your workbook  The following Data Sources are currently supported:  SQL Server  Oracle  SP Online Libraries  Power Query and all it’s supported sources

22. DEMONSTRATION Setting up Data Refresh

23. POWER BI – WHEN TO USE  Power BI-specific functionality such as Power Query and Power Map are only available with Office365  Ideal for Team projects or small to medium Organisation projects  Rapid development and relatively gentle learning curve allows quicker delivery than traditional BI solutions  Excel-based so business analysts, management and other power users will feel at home

24. POWER BI – WHEN TO CONSIDER MIGRATING Some Limitations  Limited to maximum workbook file size of 2GB following xVelocity compression  Performance for large data may not be suitable  No out-of-the-box data mining capabilities  No row-level security Migration Options  Straight-forward migration path to SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular  This gives role-based, row-level security and no upper-limit on data size  Must be SQL Server running on a box but this could be an Azure VM

25. WHAT NEXT? Try it out…  Free one month trial at www.powerbi.comwww.powerbi.com  Free trial of Excel 2013  Getting started guide at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint- online-enterprise-help/power-bi-getting-started-guide-HA104103589.aspxhttp://office.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-sharepoint- online-enterprise-help/power-bi-getting-started-guide-HA104103589.aspx Spanish Point Offer  BI Bootcamp – a one day training course in MS BI  Pilots and POC Projects (Quickstarts). May be part-funded by Microsoft.

26. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

27. Thank you