Microsoft Excel : Common Questions Around Excel 2007 OLAP PivotTables

 

Common Questions Around Excel 2007 OLAP PivotTables

Today's author: Allan Folting, a program manager who works on the Excel team.

I have gotten lots of questions from customers around specific functionality in Microsoft Excel 2007 PivotTables that is missing when connected to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Service Pack 2 cubes:

1. Filtering individual calculated members
2. Showing non-visual totals when filtering

I have also gotten lots of requests for the ability to add calculations to OLAP PivotTables using the object model, specifically:

1. Adding calculated members/measures
2. Adding named sets

Today I'll discuss these topics and outline current ways and workarounds to address this.

Microsoft Excel : Common Questions Around Excel 2007 OLAP PivotTables

Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services

 

Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services

Summary: Learn ten tips to improve your use of SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services from the SharePoint - Excel Services forum. (15 printed pages)

Joel Krist, Akona Consulting

May 2008

Ten Tips for Using SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services

Nick Barclay: BI-Lingual: PerformancePoint Monitoring Data Source Connection Problems

 

A PPS Monitoring server's default, out-of-the-box, behaviour is to connect to all data sources using a PPS application pool identity account.

That last sentence is important so it's worth repeating...

A PPS Monitoring server's default, out-of-the-box, behaviour is to connect to all data sources using a PPS application pool identity account.

Nick Barclay: BI-Lingual: PerformancePoint Monitoring Data Source Connection Problems

Download details: Microsoft Windows Dynamic Cache Service

Investigating bottlenecks with 64-bit servers?  Check the memory and ensure it is available.

Overview

The Microsoft Windows Dynamic Cache Service will manage the working set size of the Windows System File Cache. For 64 bit systems this service helps to address the problem of excessive cached read I/O that could eventually consume all of physical memory. Sample source code and compiled files are included in the compressed file.

Download details: Microsoft Windows Dynamic Cache Service

Request for comment: Global filters linked to different models

Modifying the RDL of a PPS Matrix to activate functionality within the product… tedious but useful.

We've found a way of implementing global filters (we use dimension property filters) for different models... and we'd like to know pitfalls of our approach (for the moment I can guess 2 :-))

Task: Apply global "Entity - Office" filter to Operations and Salary models

Approach:

1. Create all matrices and filters needed and apply corresponding filters to matrices.

Matrix 1: Model - Operations. Columns - Entity:Business unit Leaves. Rows - Account. Dimension property filter: Entity - Office. 

Matrix 2: Model - Salary. Columns - Account. Rows - Entity:Employees. Dimension property filter: Entity - Office

2. Edit RDL

2a. Find filter definitions

<ReportParameter Name="PerformancePoint_ebb03fb2_b6f8_4298_91cf_ceb94ee473ff"> ' Filter from Operations Model to be applied to Salary model

…

</ReportParameter>

<ReportParameter Name="PerformancePoint_ef581824_8178_4b6b_a743_59a26f740964"> ' Filter from Salary Model to be "skipped"

…

</ReportParameter>

2b. Replace Name and Value for QueryParameters using appropriate name of one of the filters (ReportParameter) you want to use for different models:

<QueryParameters>

<QueryParameter Name="PerformancePoint_ef581824_8178_4b6b_a743_59a26f740964"> ' to be replaced with see bellow

<QueryParameter Name="PerformancePoint_ebb03fb2_b6f8_4298_91cf_ceb94ee473ff">

<Value>=Parameters!PerformancePoint_ef581824_8178_4b6b_a743_59a26f740964.Value</Value> ' to be replaced with see bellow

<Value>=Parameters!PerformancePoint_ebb03fb2_b6f8_4298_91cf_ceb94ee473ff.Value</Value>

</QueryParameter>

</QueryParameters>

3. That's it.

If I select Office for Operations matrix, it's also applied to Salary Matrix :-)

Guessed pitfalls:

1. Forms and reports created using this approach can't be migrated to other application - this is hardcode! :-(

2. Any change to report definition will destroy our filters override - this is hardcode! :-(

Any thoughts re other difficulties we'll meet?

Regards, Vasily

Request for comment: Global filters linked to different models