Adding to the list of cool new visualisation tools that you can put on top of Analysis Services (or at least data sourced from AS), take a look at Fractal:Edge:

 

Very cool… must take a closer look when I have a spare moment.

Charlie Maitland has two good posts on PerformancePoint server:

I know, I’m a bit late in linking here but I was away last week… which was also the reason why I couldn’t go to the bootcamp that Charlie was at. Hohum.

Darren Gosbell has just told me that the application form for the PerformancePoint Server TAP is available at Microsoft Connect:

At the time of writing, I can see a link to the form from the front page of Connect, but if that goes away in the near future then you will probably need to sign in and go to ‘Available Connections’.

Data visualisation is definitely this year’s hot topic in BI: I’ve already blogged about how much I like Tableau (though they seem to be pretty much in bed with Hyperion now), and now here come Microcharts – another cool way of looking at your Analysis Services data:

Take a look at the online gallery:

To be honest I’d never heard of sparklines and so on before I saw an early beta of this stuff, but I’m definitely a convert now and with the focus on Microsoft BI now switching heavily to Excel with Office 2007 this is a timely release.  

At the end of last year I linked to a post on Nick Barclay’s blog entitled "Don’t forget about Visio for BI":

…which highlighted some of the features coming in Visio 2007 for BI. I naturally then forgot all about Visio for BI until I saw the following post on Mauro Cardarelli’s blog:

Apart from an online course on what’s new in Visio 2007 (https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerContent.aspx?offerPriceId=99493) he also points back to Eric Rockey’s Visio 2007 blog, which is definitely checking out again, especially this post on PivotDiagrams:

There are some interesting points raised in the comments section on whether this stuff could be integrated with Reporting Services; I agree that while these capabilities are very cool, just having them in Visio is a bit of a waste. Perhaps this is a case where a Reporting Services Custom Report Item could be written (see ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/rptsprg9/html/402910f7-7e45-4e22-8182-fb58a96bfec0.htm ) but I’m not sure you’d want to use Visio on a server in this way. For further reading, there is even more information on PivotDiagrams on Bill Morein’s blog here:

 

I heard a few months ago that Office Web Components were not going to be included in Office 2007 and wouldn’t be developed any further; here at last is the official confirmation from the Excel 2007 blog:

We’re meant to use Excel Services or Excel instead – and I’m sure that you’ll probably agree that neither of these are ideal (unless you’ve drunk the Office 2007 Kool-aid) replacements for scenarios where people have been using OWC to connect to Analysis Services. For instance, how would you replace OWC in BI Development Studio with either Excel or Excel Services? What we really need are a set of .Net pivot table controls similar to CellsetGrid or the Dundas equivalents. I feel a Connect coming on…

 

UPDATE: I just read the following interview with Alex Payne on www.tdwi.org:

I quote: "[So one of] the things we’re going to do is make the ProClarity objects be able to be used by more people than ever before….When I look at things like decomposition trees and perspective and other things they have in their arsenal, we’re going to use that stuff to help us go deeper. " Perhaps we’ll see the Proclarity controls positioned as the OWC/AS replacement?

I’ve been quite interested to watch what Panorama have been up to since the Proclarity acquisition, as I’m sure all you Panorama customers out there have been. Two new press releases have caught my eye, firstly:

It’s not clear to me exactly what’s being announced here. Are they talking about being able to use the new features in Excel 2007 pivot tables etc for querying BW directly, or are they building an AS2005 cube somewhere in there in between? Or are they using their own Excel addin to query BW and not using the new Excel pivot tables at all?

 

Secondly there’s this:

Integration with Google spreadsheets? Hmm, might be useful if Google spreadsheets ever come out of beta. How long have Google Groups been out? A good few years and I see it’s still supposedly in beta. I can’t see anyone wanting to buy or use this functionality for a while, so why build and announce it? Maybe by flirting with Google they’re trying to send MS a message…

A lot of people, me included, have been wondering what the future holds for Panorama after the Proclarity acquistion. Well it looks like Microsoft have tried to make amends in the form of a partnership to develop industry-specific BI applications:

There’ll be solutions for retail, credit management, manufacturing and other areas. Quite apart from the fact that the new apps will be nice to have, I’m glad that Panorama hasn’t been left to sink – it has some good products and the diversity of the MS BI client tool ecosystem has always been one of its strengths in my opinion, so anything that Microsoft can do to maintain that diversity should be welcomed.

So Biz# gets a proper name at last…

 

There’s a conf call (which I don’t have an invite to, alas) later to announce all this stuff properly, but here are some links to press coverage:

 

UPDATE: I missed the conf call (even though I found I didn’t need an invite – prior commitments I’m afraid) but there are already some good blog entries out there on what was announced:

and here’s the official site:

 

 

I’m sure you all know by now that I’m prone to the odd bout of wild speculation, and here comes another one… A new flavour of Office has been announced, Office Ultimate. See

for more details. As this article says, it’s pricey and MS will need to offer new functionality to justify that price tag. Now we know that it’s the Office group that have bought Proclarity and what I’m thinking is that the Proclarity fat client tool would fit nicely into Office Ultimate as exactlly that kind of justification: $679 per licence is cheap when you think of what companies have been paying for BI client tools like Proclarity up to now (and you get Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc thrown in!), plus its inclusion will drive sales of SQL Server and the other Office BI apps like BSM and (perhaps) the forthcoming Biz#. Hmm… let’s wait and see…