This course is aimed at BI professionals who want to exploit the full power of the new Tabular models in Analysis Services. No knowledge of previous versions of Analysis Services and Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) is required, because Tabular is based on different concepts and on the new DAX language.  

What you will learn

The course agenda is as follows:

Day 1

• Understanding Analysis Services 2012, BISM and the Multidimensional and Tabular models
• Installing Tabular
• Loading data
• DAX basics
• Evaluation context in DAX

Day 2

• Querying a Tabular model
• The xVelocity (or Vertipaq) engine
• The Tabular presentation layer
• Security
• Deployment
• Optimisation

For full details on this course, see:
http://www.sqlbi.com/wp-content/uploads/SSAS-Workshop-Course-Outline.pdf

Key benefits

This course will enable you to build your own Tabular models in Analysis Services 2012, create calculations using DAX and write queries using DAX.

Course attendees will also receive a copy of the new book "Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2012: The BISM Tabular Model".

The cost of this course is £850 + VAT until May 15th 2012, and £990 + VAT after that.

This course is designed for BI professionals and report writers who use Excel and Power View and who want to learn how to create effective data visualisations.

What you will learn

The course agenda is as follows:

9:30   Welcome and Introduction   

9:45   What is data visualisation? Here, we will talk about data visualisation, what is it not, and why is it important? How is it supported in the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence stack? How does it fit into the latest paradigm shift towards self-service Business Intelligence?  

10:00    Finding patterns in the data. You will learn about the cognitive psychology process involved in finding patterns in the data, looking at some of the more well-known data visualisation examples in order to understand the rationale behind designing and creating a data visualisation. We will have an overview of Power View, and some new features in Excel 2010. We will look at the purpose of Power View – and what it isn’t designed to do. This section is intended to provoke discussion with topics such as (a) should a data visualisation be beautiful as well as informative? (b) to 3D, or not to 3D? (c) are pies just for dessert, or can we use them in charts too? (d) data journalism – can it mislead as well as inform? Although this section concentrates on the psychology and human perceptual processes of data visualisation, understanding the ‘why’ of data visualisation will ultimately mean that we become stronger ‘datavizzers’.  

11:00     Break  

11:15   Getting to Know your Data using Excel and Power View. An essential part of analysis is to know and understand the data. Both applications can be used to explore tabular models. In this session, we will look at how they can be used to explore your data, and when each application is best suited. We will also look at key features of understanding data, such as searching for dirty data, anomalies or inconsistencies.  

12:30  Lunch  

13:30  Data Visualisations. Using Power View, you will learn about query design and presentation layout in order to create visualisations in Power View. This includes various visualisations such as sparklines, motion charts (as in Hans Rosling’s BBC4 programme, ‘The Joy of Stats’), parallel co-ordinates.  

14:45 Break  

15:00 Power View in Depth. In this section, we will cover the complexities of displaying multivariate data, and how Power View can help. Here, we look at ways of displaying multivariate data such as parallel co-ordinates and crosstab arrangements of Tufte's 'small multiples'. We will also talk about Power View ‘under the hood’ by tracing its behaviour, and how it initially obtains its schema and metadata information from the source.  

16:00 Break  

16:15 Dashboards  Putting it all together. Dashboards are more than simply placing a few reports on a page. We will look at the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of implementing Dashboards, KPIs and other visualisations in Excel and Power View.  

17:30 Close

Key benefits

This course will enable you to create data visualisations that will help you and your colleagues interpret you data more effectively in Excel and Power View.

This course aimed at intermediate-to-experienced Analysis Services developers, looking at more advanced cube design topics and query performance tuning.

What you will learn

Day 1

• Designing a data warehouse for use with Analysis Services
• Dimension design: designing optimal attribute relationships, when to use parent/child hierarchies and ragged hierarchies

Day 2

• Complex cube modelling: multiple measure groups with different dimensionality and different granularities, many-to-many dimensions
• Securing your cube: administrative security, dimension security, cell security
• Productionisation: understanding processing options, scheduling processing and partition creation, maintenance, monitoring and deployment

Day 3

• Understanding Query Execution: SSAS Architecture, using Profiler, Monitoring your Cube
• Query Performance Tuning – the storage engine: partitioning and aggregation design
• Query Performance Tuning – the formula engine: writing efficient MDX, tuning calculations and queries
• Tuning Processing
• Scale-up, Scale-out and hardware configuration for SSAS

Key benefits

You'll gain a deeper understanding of Analysis Services cube design best practices, and be able to design cubes and tune queries to achieve maximum performance.

This course aimed at SQL Server Integration Services developers who want to learn about new features in SSIS 2012.

What you will learn

Topics include:

•  New tasks, components, and features in SSIS 2012
•  SSIS 2012 backwards compatibility
•  Converting SSIS 2008 packages and projects to SSIS 2012
•  The new SSIS 2012 Project Deployment model
•  The new SSIS 2012 Catalogue 
•  SSIS 2012 Design Patterns 

Key benefits

You'll gain a thorough knowledge of the new features of SSIS 2012.

This course is aimed at BI professionals who want to exploit the full power of the new Tabular models in Analysis Services. No knowledge of previous versions of Analysis Services and Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) is required, because Tabular is based on different concepts and on the new DAX language.  

What you will learn

The course agenda is as follows:

Day 1

• Understanding the architecture of Analysis Services 2012, BISM and the Multidimensional and Tabular models
• Installing an Analysis Services 2012 Tabular instance
• Loading data into a Tabular model
• DAX basic concepts
• Evaluation context in DAX
  • Filter context Row context
  • The Calculate() statement  

Day 2

• Querying a Tabular model in DAX and MDX
• The xVelocity (or Vertipaq) engine
• The Tabular presentation layer
  • Building hierarchies
  • Power View-related properties
• Implementing security on a Tabular model
• Deployment
  • DirectQuery mode
  • InMemory mode
• Optimisation and monitoring

Key benefits

This course will enable you to build your own Tabular models in Analysis Services 2012, create calculations using DAX and write queries using DAX.

This course is designed for BI professionals and report writers who use Excel and Power View and who want to learn how to create effective data visualisations.

What you will learn

The course agenda is as follows:

9:30   Welcome and Introduction   

9:45   What is data visualisation? Here, we will talk about data visualisation, what is it not, and why is it important? How is it supported in the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence stack? How does it fit into the latest paradigm shift towards self-service Business Intelligence?  

10:00    Finding patterns in the data. You will learn about the cognitive psychology process involved in finding patterns in the data, looking at some of the more well-known data visualisation examples in order to understand the rationale behind designing and creating a data visualisation. We will have an overview of Power View, and some new features in Excel 2010. We will look at the purpose of Power View – and what it isn’t designed to do. This section is intended to provoke discussion with topics such as (a) should a data visualisation be beautiful as well as informative? (b) to 3D, or not to 3D? (c) are pies just for dessert, or can we use them in charts too? (d) data journalism – can it mislead as well as inform? Although this section concentrates on the psychology and human perceptual processes of data visualisation, understanding the ‘why’ of data visualisation will ultimately mean that we become stronger ‘datavizzers’.  

11:00     Break  

11:15   Getting to Know your Data using Excel and Power View. An essential part of analysis is to know and understand the data. Both applications can be used to explore tabular models. In this session, we will look at how they can be used to explore your data, and when each application is best suited. We will also look at key features of understanding data, such as searching for dirty data, anomalies or inconsistencies.  

12:30  Lunch  

13:30  Data Visualisations. Using Power View, you will learn about query design and presentation layout in order to create visualisations in Power View. This includes various visualisations such as sparklines, motion charts (as in Hans Rosling’s BBC4 programme, ‘The Joy of Stats’), parallel co-ordinates.  

14:45 Break  

15:00 Power View in Depth. In this section, we will cover the complexities of displaying multivariate data, and how Power View can help. Here, we look at ways of displaying multivariate data such as parallel co-ordinates and crosstab arrangements of Tufte's 'small multiples'. We will also talk about Power View ‘under the hood’ by tracing its behaviour, and how it initially obtains its schema and metadata information from the source.  

16:00 Break  

16:15 Dashboards  Putting it all together. Dashboards are more than simply placing a few reports on a page. We will look at the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of implementing Dashboards, KPIs and other visualisations in Excel and Power View.  

17:30 Close

Key benefits

This course will enable you to create data visualisations that will help you and your colleagues interpret you data more effectively in Excel and Power View.

Who is it for?

This is an advanced workshop designed for IT Professionals who design, administer or maintain critical platforms based on SQL Server 2005, 2008, R2 or 2012. Participants should be spending or planning to spend most of their time working with SQL Server. 

What you will learn

This two day workshop provides participants with the opportunity to learn about advanced SQL Server support topics in a very approachable way. Low-level SQL Server components are illustrated by following the “life of a query”. This helps to consolidate understanding of the architecture and provides a context from which to delve further. An iterative methodology is presented to help structure advanced concepts including:

• Memory grants and cache usage
• I/O considerations and diagnosing problems
• SQL Server waits and wait types
• Troubleshooting latch waits
• Query plan optimisation and execution

The following tools are demonstrated throughout the workshop that are key to fast analysis and resolution:

• PSSDiag and Perfstats for data collection
• SQLNexus for data analysis

Full instruction is given in how to configure and run these tools in your own environment. 

Key benefits

This workshop provides attendees with a comprehensive understanding of key SQL Server troubleshooting tools and methods. Attendees will benefit from:

• Reduced time to resolution for production SQL Server problems
• Reduced occurrences of issues through proactive troubleshooting
• Established troubleshooting methodology

This course designed for BI professionals with some experience of SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, but little or no experience of MDX, will teach the fundamentals of the MDX query language and show how to implement common queries and calculations.

What you will learn

The course agenda is as follows:

Day 1

• What is MDX and why should I use it?
• Understanding the structure of a cube: recognizing cubes, measure groups, dimensions and hierarchies
• Understanding the concepts of members, tuples and sets
• Writing simple queries: using SQL Management studio to write SELECT statements
• Creating simple calculated members: when to use query, session and cube-scoped calculations, using simple MDX expressions and functions

Day 2

• Standard Calculations: looking at the best ways to implement common calculations, such as time series, market shares and rankings
• Using set functions: using common MDX functions such as Crossjoin, Filter, Order, Generate to create more complex queries
• Advanced concepts: autoexists, solve order and subselects

Day 3

• MDX Script Assignments: making scoped assignments, understanding how assignments affect aggregation, using assignments with calculated members
• MDX for Reporting Services
• Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting: using Profiler, building aggregations, functions to avoid

Key benefits

This course will enable you to write your own MDX queries for reports (for example in SQL Server Reporting Services), and add value to your existing cube by creating new MDX calculations on it.