Dabratt’s SQL Server 2008 Blog (en)

After installing Reporting Services 2008 on Windows 7, you may encounter blank page when accessing to the Report Manager:

Typical display of a rightless user despite the fact that you are local admin on your machine…an access to the ReportServer URL will confirm it.

A slight manipulation is necessary to retablish rights correctly:

• Open Internet Explorer with the “Run As Administrator” mode.
• Go to the Report Manager, this time display should be normal.
• Give necessary rights to you local user through the “Properties -> Security” tab and “Site Parameteres -> Security” link. 

Microsoft has decided to rethink it’s BI strategy and to concentrate various modules.

Many changes are planified:
- PPS Planning will be abandoned.
- PPS Monitoring & Analytics will be entirely integrated in MOSS.

More details here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-bi-strategy-update.aspx

I passed successfully exam 70-452 PRO: Designing a Business Intelligence Infrastructure Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008. I’m now officially a Microsoft Certified IT Professional Business Intelligence Developer 2008.

When installing .NET Framework 3.5 on a server hosting PerformancePoint, you may encounter following error when connecting to the PPS WebService through Dashboard Designer:

Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35′ or one of its dependencies

Generaly, installing AJAX extensions will resolve it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ca9d90fa-e8c9-42e3-aa19-08e2c027f5d6&displaylang=en

Time for self-satisfaction: i’ve just successfully passed 70-432 and 70-448 exams.

I’m now officially MCTS SQL Server 2008, Implemention et Maintenance et MCTS SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance.

Next objective: MCITP!

Microsoft has just published new connectors for Oracle and Teradata databases.

Those components are intended to achieve optimal performances.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d9cb21fe-32e9-4d34-a381-6f9231d84f1e&displaylang=en

To specify new connection details to a recently moved PPSMonitoring database, you have to modify Bpm.MonitoringConnectionString in following Web.config files:

• C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\<instance_PPS>\WebService
• C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\<instance_PPS>\Preview
• C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80

PPS 2007 SP1 is available since yesterday:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3444589&SiteID=17

In SSRS 2005, it was quite easy to configure anonymous access to the Report Manager. It could be achieved by configuring security on virtual directories in IIS.

With SSRS 2008, since IIS is no more used, things are going to be a little bit more complicated. It will be necessary to implement a custom security extension to achieve this.

Here you’ll find Teo Lachev’s confirmation on that fact:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3258800&SiteID=1

There’s an annoying limitation in SQL Server 2008’s CTP6: in Reporting Services, MDX queries on OLAP datasources can’t be freely modified from the generic query designer.

You have to manually edit the rdl file to achieve MDX query edition.

In the section referencing dataset’s query:
- In the <rd: DesignerState> section of the rdl file, be sure to add <Type>Query</Type> before the
<QuerySpecification xsi:type=”MDXQuerySpecification”> item. This will disable usage of query designer.
- Modify manually the MDX query in the two places where it appears in clear text.
- Back in Report Designer, be sure to open dataset and execute query once to refresh fields list.

Update: Issue is fixed with SQL Server 2008 RC0!