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BI Tips and Tricks with SQL Server Reporting Services Adam Aspin SQL Bits XII, 19th July 2014
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What we are here to see… Solutions to: – Impress the boss – Stun your colleagues – Save time and money By: – More fully exploiting the potential of existing technology – Leveraging current skills – Avoiding costly and time-consuming alternatives
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What we are discussing Corporate BI – using SQL Server Reporting Services “Canned Reports”: – Regular delivery / Agreed, predefined metrics – Limited interactivity Add a “BI” flavour to SSRS: – Scorecards – KPIS – Dashboards SSRS as a Corporate BI delivery platform – Basic parameter-driven interactivity – No attempt at interactive development
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KPI and Scorecard basics Key Performance Indicators – Value – Goal – Status – Trend See what a result is, how it maps to target and where it is going ( Context, Threshold, Evolution ) Anything that can be measured of strategic or tactical importance
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Dashboard Basics Many possible overviews of multiple aspects of a business Can include targets and objectives Composed of multiple elements “Widgets” – Scorecards – Tables – Charts – Gauges – Sparklines – Maps – Etc…
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How do we Apply SSRS? Design element – Appreciation of the diverse elements which can make up a dashboard and/or a scorecard – Understand which type of presentation element gets the information across best Technology aspect – essentially applied to the Interface – Parameters – Expressions – Datasets
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Design Elements Presentation Choices – Tabular, text-based, graphical – or hybrid. – Effective – and different - Charts and Gauges Design Choices – Backgrounds, borders, images and text – Colours to alert and display thresholds Figures or chart/gauge? – Tooltips to display data
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Presentation – Classic Scorecard Indicators (Status and Trend) Standard tabular format Background Image
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Presentation - “Graphic” Scorecard Pointers for Actuals and Target Colour for Threshold Trend as Indicator
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Presentation – Text-based Scorecard Allows for multiple KPIs Sparkline for Trend analysis
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Design Tricks: Gauges Vary Pointer Types – Needle for single elements – Bar for one or two elements – Marker for multiple elements – Mix pointer types to hierarchize Mix Pointer Types Group Gauges Rarer Gauge Types – Thermometer – Multi-Scale / Multi-Gauge Gauge Enhancements – Overlay Data as text – Multiple Ranges – colour sensitive to thresholds – Add Legends
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Design Tricks: Charts Appropriate Chart Types – Read the classics (Few, Tufte) Add Markers Less Traditional Charts – Radar – Pyramid – Bubble – Waterfall Remember less used, but “Out of the Box” techniques: – Order chart elements – Striplines – Vary Category Colours – Add markers – Order charts in a table
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Design Tricks - Images Images as backgrounds – Tablix – Textbox – Chart – Gauge Images as borders – 8 images to make an extensible border (BackgroundRepeat) Text as Image – Vertical or Diagonal Swap images for effect: – Selection (Slicer and Highlight) – Visual Alert
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Design Tricks: Maps First find your (geographical) data! –.Shp (Shape) files (Ex: BoundaryLine – Ordnance Survey) – Shape2SQL – convert shape file data to SQL Server geographical data types Store in database not Report for speed of rendering Cache reports containing Maps
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Layout Tricks Force vertical alignment of charts and gauges using tables Nested tables “Dummy” tables for images Invisible lines and rectangles to force vertical alignment across a page
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Putting It All Together – One Example
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Putting It All Together – Another Example
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Interface Tweaks Revamping the user interface – Replace the tired UI for parameter selection – Define limited recordsets for efficient paging Enhance Interactivity (well – to some extent) through more modern interface techniques: – Slicers – Tiles – Highlighting – Recordset Paging
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Technology I - Hidden Parameters “Passback” – an attempt at viewstate Have to be applied everywhere there is interactivity! Uses: – Replace the parameter ribbon – Replace the toolbar – Example: Slicers Selection Menus
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Technology II - Expressions Clunky - but the key method of enhancing BI reports Possible with nearly every object and Property A few simple elements do all the work: – IIF – Lookup – Choose – Lookup/Lookupset/Multilookup Can test on data and parameters! Some uses: – Apply Colours – Add Images – Show/Hide elements – Example – printer-friendly output
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Mobile BI using SSRS Only from 2012SP1 onwards Report Server not Report Manager URL Manage reduced screen space: – Consider revamping the report access interface – Fewer elements - drillthrough-based
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Technology II - Data Tricks Use a single dataset to calculate and return maximum values for gauges Link datasets (Lookup function) Share Datasets Cache datasets Linked SSAS server to return data to T-SQL complex queries (target data for instance) Paged data sets (2012)
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To Finish Much, much more that could be shown, for instance: – Optimisation techniques – Standardisation approaches (templates, styles etc) Any questions? Happy BI Development with SSRS.
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Adam Aspin IT consultant and Contractor Over 30 years experience 25 years in databases and reporting (now “Business Intelligence”) Author: – SQL Server 2012 Data Integration Recipes – High Impact Data Visualization with Power View, Power Map and Power BI – Many articles for SQLServerCentral.Com Adam@Calidra.co.uk
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