Today we have launched the CTP2 for Reporting Services! Please download it from here and have fun! Make sure you read the release notes!
The release contains MANY bug fixes (many customers already use this in production), performance improvements and features! The most important ones are outlined in the blog post from Friday.
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Monday, the 22nd of November 2010 we will launch "PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services" CTP2. Here is a preview taken out of the release notes:
PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services CTP2 brings bug fixes as well as new features. This is a list of the changes:
1. Bugfix: PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services and its sample data does not install in a subsite. The bug was fixed in CTP2. Please follow the “Migration from CTP1 to CTP2” chapter in this document or install CTP2 on a machine that never had CTP1 installed on it. Please see the forum question http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-CA/sqlkjpowerpivotforexcel/thread/7664690b-ea78-488f-9703-0ffd458422f0 for a discussion on this CTP1 issue.
2. Bugfix: installBIPivot.ps1 PowerShell script is not digitally signed. The bug was fixed in CTP2 (the script is now digitally signed). Please see the forum question http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqlkjpowerpivotforexcel/thread/29aa2101-5210-4a5b-81b8-d9fadef0524d for a discussion on the CTP1 issue.
3. Bugfix: PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services does not work if the data contain null values. In CTP1 there was the workaround to change the data in order to avoid nulls (e.g. put a special value, like -1 in lieu of null). The bug was fixed in CTP2.
4. Bugfix: PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services does not work if numeric values have too large or too small exponent. The issue was that numeric data was considered to be double. The default serialization of doubles will change to the scientific notation if the exponent is above 14 or below -4. The bug was fixed in CTP2 (by considering numeric data as decimal instead).
5. Feature: Support for arbitrary OleDb data. CTP2 supports now generic OleDb providers (e.g. Oracle or DB2) for building applications. This is in addition to the datasources supported in CTP2: PowerPivot (and Analysis Service) via Adomd.NET and SQL Server (via SqlClient). Please see more details in the “Supported Data Sources” chapter of the “PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services.docx” document that is part of this distribution.
6. Feature: Support for links in facet data. CTP2 supports now hyperlinks in facet data. Please see more details in the “Dataset Query Specification” chapter of the “PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services.docx” document that is part of this distribution.
7. Feature: Support for multivalued facet data. CTP2 supports now multivalued facet string data. Please see more details in the “Dataset Query Specification” chapter of the “PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services.docx” document that is part of this distribution.
Stay tuned for when the new bits are live!!3View comments
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I've produced a new video that dives down into the anatomy of a PivotViewer application for Reporting Services and shows how to build a cool app (original link: http://bit.ly/a0Rho3).
Also, there has been a bug report (thanks to Kasper) that PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services does not deal well with null values. Indeed, this is a bug, fixed already and will be available in CTP2.
As another tip, for whenever a collection doesn't "load" Fiddler2 is your friend: it lets you investigate the web requests/responses to/from SharePoint.4View comments
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Please see the video where Donald Farmer demonstrates the capabilities of PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services. It's awsome:
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I've produced a video that demonstrates how to get the PivotViewer Extension for RS installed (including the sample app) and help you get started.
Also, one quick (but important) mention (it's also part of the video): you'll have to explicitely unblock the PowerShell script in order to be able to run it (I've forgotten to sign it). The video demostrates how to unblock the script (really easy).
Here is the video. Make sure you view it in HD. Enjoy!
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The CTP1 of PivotViewer for Reporting Services has just shipped! Get your free download from here. As I was saying in an earlier post, it is a concept project. It's not supported, and not a feature.
However, it is really cool! It allows you to easily create stunning visualizations on top of your BI data - and these visualizations are fully dynamic: you decide at runtime which subset of data you should see, it shows the actual live numbers, and you decide how much (meta)data you associate with each card. Also, all of the cards are generated by the service, so it is very convenient. Of course it comes with sample data, and a tutorial.
I will continue to post articles here but if you have questions, I suggest you ask them on the PowerPivot forum. I will monitor it for questions related to PivotViewer for Reporting Services.
Videos will be posted soon - I'll keep you informed (also on twitter) about the location.9View comments
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Microsoft has recently released a new Silverlight control called PivotViewer. This new control helps us to make better use of the growing amounts of information around us by visualizing thousands of things at once in a way that reveals the relationships which connect them. At the heart of the PivotViewer control are “Collections”. They combine large groups of similar items, so we can begin viewing the relationships between individual pieces of information in a new way. By visualizing hidden patterns, PivotViewer enables users to discover and act on new insights.
The Business Intelligence engineering team have prototyped a new concept that couples the PivotViewer control with a utility that uses Reporting Services to automatically generate this type of collections. We showcased this concept at the BI conference in New Orleans with overwhelming support and interest from our community of BI enthusiasts and are making this demo available here to those that would like to evaluate it in their own sandbox environments.
Ted Kummert, Senior Vice President of Business Platform Division has announced the availability of this “concept project” named PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services within the next 30 days or so. It will be just a preview, and won’t be supported product or feature of Microsoft Business Intelligence. As such, it may not work perfectly under all conditions. We look forward to your feedback and participation in this experiment and will continue working hard to bring cutting edge visualization technologies like PivotViewer to you as fast as possible. And I will maintain connection with you, the customers, via this blog, to get the feedback about this project.
We’re working out the final details for making it available. Until then, stay tuned and review the video fragments from the Teched Keynote (from offset 1h:10m or so) and from the BI Conference Keynote (from offset 1h:21m or so).1View comments
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I have recently started to work on Business Intelligence “futures”, or how we sometimes call it, the “BI Labs”. The BI Labs effort has started out of the desire to present our customers with new ideas, in the form of samples/prototypes that gives them a glimpse into the future. As these prototypes are not “products”, they come with no formal documentation, support or anything similar to that so I wanted to compensate that by maintaining a relationship with the customers in the form of a blog. This is it – that blog I mean!
I also would like to mention that, at the BI Labs I work together with Amir Netz, Distinguished Engineer – a known and popular figure inside the BI world.
As a note, when I say “we” I do refer to “Microsoft”. However, this is my personal blog and the notes in here do not represent Microsoft’s opinion nor implies any legal obligation. It is nothing more than it actually is: a blog.0Add a comment
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