1. Bringing source control to BI world!
Heidi Hasting
Bringing source control to BI world!
Hello Everyone…

2. Thanks to All Sponsors
Gold Sponsors
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Bronze Sponsor

3. Heidi Hasting Business Intelligence Professional
over 7 years experience in Microsoft products.
Formerly software developer.
ALM/DLM enthusiast and Azure DevOps fan.
Co-founder and Organiser of Adelaide Power BI User Group.
Regular attendee at tech events (Azure Bootcamps, DevOps days, SQL Saturdays, Difinity and PASS Summit)
Bit about me – what’s not on the slide
Change hair colour frequently – makes it easy to find me at conferences, I go my natural colour brown to blend in
For holidays I go to techie events
Microsoft superfan

4. Why are you here?
Do you ever have trouble finding the latest version of a report?
Do you want to see the changes to a database/cube/report over time?
Do you need to identify where a field is used across your BI Environment?
Do you have issues with parallel development?
Do you work in a Business Intelligence environment with no source control?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then this session is for you!
If you have questions throughout the presentation please feel free to ask them. Or if you don’t feel comfortable raising them in front of the group I’ll be around for the rest of today please do come see me.
Ask the audience questions –
Does anyone have databases?
If a measure is changed do you know the who/what/when/why
Do you have a backup
Doesn’t require sysadmin to see things….

5. Agenda Why source control is important.
The different Visual Studio project types (database, analysis services, integration services and reporting services)
How to bring an existing business intelligence environment into Source Control
How to make a change
How source control helps collaboration.
Tell em what your gonna tell em

6. Assumptions Source Control and access to it
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
Visual Studio and/or SQL Server Data Tools
Business Intelligence
Database Engine
SSIS = SQL Server Integration Services
SSAS = SQL Server Analysis Services (multidimensional/tabular)
SSRS = SQL Server Reporting Services
Some experience working with traditional business intelligence solutions using Microsoft SQL Server
So before we get started I want to just mention a few assumptions I’ve made
You’ve heard of Source Control

7. Source Control – What & Why
Source control is management of changes to files, websites…
Sometimes called Version Control, Revision Control
Keeps history for you, so you can see the changes to a database/cube/report over time
Helps with the Who/What/When/Why
Backup/Disaster Recovery
parallel development
Many more…
Laymans terms – think file systems, track changes on documents but for files, keeps history for you, allows you to revert changes, see changes over time, backup.
Example of when it can help you out, db changes made, application breaks, hello source control tell me what changed…
Or maybe you don’t have enough access to see all the details…

8. Source Control – Who Developer Database Administrator (DBA)
Business Intelligence Developer
Report Developer
Data Scientist
Data Analyst
EVERYONE!!!!

9. Source Control – When Proactively Retrospectively
Starting a new solution
Database, ETL, Cube, Reports
Scripts
Retrospectively
Solution already deployed
Potentially managed on server environment.
Proactively or Retrospectively
Proactively when you are working on any artefact/CI put it into source control, if it ends up being deployed to an environment great. If it doesn’t you still have it for reference.
Retrospectively – You have an existing environment and you just want to give yourself a backup, or get started part way through the process.

10. Scenario DB+SSIS+SSAS(Multi)+SSRS
Lets start with a scenario, I am a business intelligence developer with a server environment containing SSDB, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS solutions

11. DB
Here is my SSDB solution the WideWorldImporters DW

12. SSIS
SSIS solution a DailyETLMain package in project deployment mode as part of the Daily ETL project

13. SSAS
SSAS Multidimensional cube WideWorldImportersMultidimensionalCube

14. SSRS
SSRS demo

15. Visual Studio

16. Visual Studio SSDT and SSDT-BI
Now lets talk about what/how Visual Studio comes into play. Visual Studio or for some SQL Server Data Tools has a number of project types that support business intelligence solutions. Note: Power BI not so much.
Over the years the installation components have changed, for this scenario I have installed SSDT and SSDT BI
So If we load Visual Studio and do New > Project… then the next slide is what we would see for BI
SSDT and SSDT-BI

17. So you can see here we have Analysis Services Multidimensional and Tabular, Integration Services (there is actually two but only one displayed there), Reporting Services and Database Project.
So now that you’ve seen the project types lets setup projects for my environment

18. Demo: Bring Existing BI Environment into Visual Studio Projects

19. Solution is now in Source Control!!

20. Recap Why source control is important.
The different Visual Studio project types (database, analysis services, integration services and reporting services)
How to bring an existing business intelligence environment into Source Control
How to facilitate Parallel Development

21. Where to from here
Changes all locally in the visual studio projects nothing deployed to the environment
We can deploy to the environment when ready
We can revert the changes in source control…
There is also the concept of branches in source control….

22. Questions

23. Further Information
Wide World Importers samples - SQL Server Data Tools - VSTS - Database Projects: What is source control? Troy Hunt’s “The 10 commandments of good source control management” -

24. Further Information
VSTS GIT Branching Strategies ALM Rangers Guidance (checkout Branching and Merging Guide)

25. Thank for attending SQLSaturday Perth!!

26. Heidi Hasting - Contacts

27. Screenshots in case of demo issues

28. Database Engine

32. Note: mention the folder structure options…

36. Design View

37. T-SQL View

38. Now lets add the SSIS project

40. SSIS

46. Add SSAS

52. Now lets add the SSRS project

61. Adding to Source Control - VSTS
There are many source control solutions out there (Github, TFS, VSTS, Subversion, etc) but for this demo I will use VSTS.
Here I have a VSTS Team Project called SQL Saturday South Island 2018 and as you can see its empty

62. Visual Studio
While there are many options to add files to source control such as PowerShell, GIT Bash, GIT GUI, via Web and other tooling. I will be using Visual Studio
In Visual Studio
Load the Team Explorer pane
Under Hosted Service Providers Select Connect…
Connect to the VSTS server
Connect to the SQL Saturday South Island 2018

63. We’re all connected and good to go

64. Select Add Solution to Source Control
Select Add Solution to Source Control.. And Visual Studio knows that we want it to be added to the VSTS team project we were connected to

65. Solution and Project files are modified to include reference to source control.

66. As this is GIT the commit is local first, then we need to push to remote repository

68. Note the URL is from an earlier slide

72. Time to make a change
Added Display Name, notice the little tick next to Customer as there has been a change to the file

73. Right click the file and select Commit

78. Let’s see the changes over time
Added Display Name, notice the little tick next to Customer as there has been a change to the file

79. Local History
Added Display Name, notice the little tick next to Customer as there has been a change to the file

80. Remote History - VSTS
For remote repository history use VSTS

81. Compare
Select the two versions to compare, right click and select Compare…

82. Added Display Name, notice the little tick next to Customer as there has been a change to the file