Power BI And SQL Server 2016 BI Announcements At PASS Summit 2015

This year’s PASS Summit is drawing to a close as I write this, and I have to say that the number of Microsoft BI-related announcements made over the last few days has been overwhelming. There have been announcements made via blog posts, such as (shock!) the roadmap blog post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2015/10/29/microsoft-business-intelligence-our-reporting-roadmap.aspx

…which you should probably read before anything else, as well as the following posts which have more details on specific areas:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2015/10/28/sql-server-2016-community-technology-preview-3-0-is-available.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/analysisservices/archive/2015/10/28/what-s-new-for-sql-server-2016-analysis-services-in-ctp3.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2015/10/28/pin-reporting-services-charts-to-power-bi-dashboards-with-sql-server-2016-ctp-3-0.aspx

There have also been a lot of other announcements made in sessions about functionality that will be available at some point in the next few months, including (and in no particular order):

• The performance problem with Excel subtotals that I described in this blog post: http://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2011/10/07/excel-subtotals-when-querying-multidimensional-and-tabular-models/ is finally going to be addressed in Excel 2016 in an update that will be available before the end of the year. This is going to solve a lot of people’s performance problems – problems that people may not even realise they had.
• SSDT for SSAS 2016 will have a script view where you can see all of your DAX calculations in one place
• SSDT will be getting monthly updates so new functionality can be delivered much more quickly
• On top of the improvements in SSAS Tabular DirectQuery mentioned in the blog posts above, we’ll also get support for row-level security and calculated columns (but only ones that reference values in the same row of the table that the calculated column is on)
• SSAS Tabular will also get Translations, but only for metadata and not for data
• There will be a Power BI Enterprise Gateway, the corporate big brother of the Personal Gateway
• Datazen will be rolled into SSRS and Datazen reports will be a new ‘mobile’ report type
• The Power BI mobile app will be able to display these new SSRS mobile reports as well as Power BI reports
• The Power BI team will be releasing a new custom datavisualisation component every week. We had the new Chiclet slicer this week, which I am already using lots, and in one demo I spotted a Proclarity-style decomposition tree
• Power BI desktop will work with SSAS Multidimensional as a live data source (ie not through importing data, but running DAX queries in the background) by the end of this year
• PowerBI.com dashboard tiles will become properly interactive, and you will be able to pin entire reports as well as just individual components to them
• You’ll be able to embed ranges and charts from Excel workbooks into PowerBI.com reports; integration looks much nicer than the rather basic functionality that’s already there
• Power Map/3D maps will be embedded in Power BI Desktop and PowerBI.com
• You’ll be able to run R scripts in Power BI Desktop and display R visualisations in there too
• There was a demo of an Android(?) phone version of the Power BI mobile app, where when the phone camera saw a QR code it displayed a report for the product that the QR code represented over the camera feed. Virtual reality BI!
• Power BI Desktop will get a “Get Insights” button that, when pushed, will display a report that does some basic statistical analysis of your data, looking for minimums, maximums, outliers etc
• The Power BI API will be able to give you a list of reports and their URLs
• Power BI will soon have its own registration page for applications that use the API; no need to go to the Azure Portal.
• Synonyms and phrasings for Q&A will be coming to Power BI by the end of the year

I *think* that’s everything, but I may well have missed a few things. Many of the features that were mentioned in passing would have deserved a five-minute slot in a keynote in previous years.

Power BI is finally a commercially viable product and it’s getting even better every week – the competition should be very worried. I’m also really pleased that MS are taking corporate, on-premises BI seriously at last and that SSRS is back in favour (I would have loved more new features in SSAS Multidimensional, but hey, you can’t have everything) – if you’re wondering what the picture at the top of this post is, it’s the cloud and boxed SQL Server “happy together” at last, and it appeared in several MS presentations this week. The box is back! Most importantly, for the first time in a long time, Microsoft has a coherent vision for how all of its BI products should work together, it’s working on new features to make that vision a reality, and it is willing to share it with us as a roadmap.

In summary I can’t remember the last time I felt this positive about the future of Microsoft BI. What MS have achieved over the last year has been remarkable, and it seems like it’s the leadership of James Phillips that has made all the difference – every MS employee I’ve talked to has had good things to say about him and I guess this explains why he got a promotion in the reorg last week. I hope all this continues.