Angry Geeks and User DSNs

Microsoft has added another item to their deprecation chopping block. It seems like they are focusing more on pairing down their software offerings and developer tools to a single trunk rather than adding branches to them. This time it is replacing OLE-DB with its older, less agile parent, ODBC.  A roadmap which may not be the most current flavour is here.

ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is a standard, platform-independent interface to databases. For years, ODBC has been shunned by SQL application developers in favor of OLE-DB, a faster, more object-oriented replacement. Many business users have been faced with the need to make sure their User DSNs or System DSNs are setup correctly when using Excel spreadsheets, Windows apps accessing databases, or Access linked databases. This headache was solved by utilizing the OLE-DB interface, which stored the connection string outside the ODBC Adminstrator box in Windows Control Panel and uses a more dynamic approach. This also removed some headaches for standardizing desktop configurations and making things more portable.

However, OLE-DB doesn't work in the cloud and MS has its head in the cloud right now.

There are pros and cons to using OLE-DB vs. ODBC, and apparently Microsoft has weighed in and decided the cons outweigh the pros, or at least there is no business justification for further investment in the technology, or they figure it's best to shove everyone screaming into the cloud.

What does this all mean? To me, it's sort of like getting rid of the Ford Mustang and replacing it with a Model T. Yes everyone has one, yes the parts are interchangeable and easy to fix, and yes it only comes in black, but is that a good thing if it only does 72km/h and gets flat tires every 3000km?

Pasted from <http://www.topspeed.com/cars/ford/1908-ford-model-t-ar32509.html>

Perhaps, if the Mustang had a faulty "Made in China" transmission...

If you're using OLE-DB for SQL Server to access a SQL database in your application, in 2018 this is no longer supported by Microsoft. This means many legacy apps will require retuning to operate with the ODBC drivers coming out of post SQL 2012 releases.

Other than Angry Geeks who need to change connection strings and rewrite code, who does this affect?

Customers who have long-term IT roadmaps will have to rethink their strategy in a couple of years. Who this may impact the most is those who invested in Analysis Services cubes and Integration Services ETL packages. These BI solutions don't play well with ODBC, and it's funny that MS is killing off something that really affects the SQL suite of products so dramatically.

Some comments from the developer community here and here.

So it's now ODBC in favour of OLE-DB, HTML5 in favour of Flash and Silverlight, Excel in favour of PerformancePoint Planning, Office Accounting, and Microsoft Money, Freecell in favour of Flight Simulator, Windows Metro on a tablet, phone or TV instead of Windows on a PC, and NASA balloons instead of manned Space Shuttles.

It seems Everything pre-2011 will be legacy in 2012 and MS will start with a clean slate, frustrating customers and developers in the process. 

I have a box of discontinued Sidewinder joysticks if anyone is interested. Unfortunately you need a game port to USB adapter, which is probably more expensive than a USB joystick.

The personal computer in 2019.

RDA Blogs - RDA BI/SQL Server Practice Group Blog

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why these things are so hard to find.

Finding SharePoint performance point Dashboard designer tool was a little tricky. It’s a click once download that is not available anywhere in MSDN downloads or any other place. However you can download it from your Business Intelligence Center page in SharePoint.

To make your life easier, if you ever need it and you already have PerformancePoint installed on your SharePoint sever then here is how you can get it:

1. Open your browser as an admin user
2. Go to this URL http://<server-name>/sites/<site-name>/pages/ppssample.aspx
3. Click the “Run Dashboard Designer” and let it download the tool for you.

In highly customized SharePoint 2010 sites this page can be hard to find.

RDA Blogs - RDA BI/SQL Server Practice Group Blog

Bidoma Alert | Bidoma.com

Push-notification of Sharepoint PerformancePoint Services Alerts on KPIs.

Bidoma Alert is a productivity add-on for Microsoft® PerformancePoint®.

Bidoma Alert supports Microsoft PerformancePoint Server Monitoring & Analytics 2007 and PerformancePoint Services for Microsoft Office SharePoint 2010.

Customers are able to add extensive e-mail alerting capabilities to existing or new Microsoft PerformancePoint installations.

Bidoma Alert | Bidoma.com

Getting rid of GUIDs in SharePoint 2010 database names - The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac

Getting rid of GUIDs in SharePoint 2010 database names - The SharePoint Farmer's Almanac: "'But dynamic duo who cares if the world runs out of GUIDs?' Well, to be honest the people it scares the most are the poor developers. And while we generally consider developers second class citizens that doesn't mean we wish them harm. And let's face it, if they didn't have GUIDs they would have nothing to do. And we all know bored developers will wander the halls of your office building aimlessly. Or worse they will congregate in places like the break room and will want to make small talk with you when you go to get an afternoon Mt. Dew. I don't know about you, but nothing ruins my day worse than idle chit-chat with a developer. Yucky.

Get rid of those GUIDs. Whoever decided to put GUIDs in Sharepoint database names and didn't allow the users to change them at install time should be made to type in GUIDs from memory for 30 days. Failure to type in a correct GUID would result in an electric shock.

SQL Server Code Name “Denali” CTP3 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 are HERE! - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

The latest SQL 2011 (2012?) bits are ready for public consumption, including the long-awaited Project Crescent. 

You’ll need a Sharepoint 2010 SP1 instance to get a taste of it though.

Some of the key features:

• Column-store indexes blow away performance ratings and flip SQL’s architecture on its side.
• Great for read-only snapshots of data but can’t update the column-store indexed tables
• Always-on – primary with up to 4 standby servers with read-only capabilities
• BISM, BISM, BISM
• Analysis Services multi-dimensional or tabular (Vertipaq in-memory) modes.  Run setup twice for 2 instances. 
• T-SQL Windowing functions like Lag and Lead.
• SSDT “Data Dude”
• Relationship diagrams in PowerPivot
• Ragged columns, Shared Connections in SSIS
• Data taps in SSIS
• Master Data in Excel
• Data Quality Services

SQL Server Code Name “Denali” CTP3 and SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 are HERE! - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Some of the quirks and gotchas:

• In January 2012 there is a good possibility you will be scrambling for a version that doesn’t expire in 180 days.  Otherwise your 180 day install will just stop working.  The YSQL2.012K feature.
• Running the download file doesn’t actually install the software.  It just uncompresses it automatically. Then goes away.
• Analysis Services multi-dimensional or tabular (Vertipaq in-memory) modes. Run setup twice for 2 instances.  Which one do I choose?  The one without the features like parent-child relationships and many-to-many dimensions but supported by PowerPivot?  Or “legacy” mode?  Both will likely eat server resources.
• Reporting Services wouldn’t let me log in until I added my account as admin, which required me to login somehow.  Run IE as Admin to get around this.
• No backwards compatibility for PowerPivot < CTP3. 
• MS appears to be killing off those developers who still want to run SQL on Windows XP.  Denali won’t work on XP.
• You need to install Powershell 2.0 first.
• You need admin rights on the box to work with Analysis Services tabular models.
• Installing Office 2010 after may break Analysis Services connectivity for some Reporting Services features.
• Installing some components like DQS and Integration Services in a non-default location won’t work. 
• Clicking on multiple SQL files opens multiple instances of SSMS.  Don’t click on multiple files… OR ELSE!
• IInstalling Books Online was strangely confusing for me… pick the location where you downloaded Help libraries, huh?
• Reinstall Visual Studio SP1 after installing CTP3.  It will break VS 2010.
• VS 2008 BIDS stops working?  Haven’t experienced this yet and hope I don’t.

Lots of stuff to take in.

Performance Point Services 2010 Limitations - Microsoft Business Intelligence by Nishant - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

Some limitations of PPS according to Nishant.  My biggest limitation with the product is it no longer includes Proclarity, and they’re still trying to catch up with the features of that tool.

Customers I worked with loved Proclarity and I found it easy to use and navigate, and features like custom sets, decomp trees and heat maps were very powerful.  MS really needs a desktop tool for their BI stack, outside of Excel.  Perhaps Project Crescent might deliver on that, within a Silverlight smart client.

Performance Point Services 2010 Limitations - Microsoft Business Intelligence by Nishant - Site Home - MSDN Blogs