Rob Kerr, MCDBA, MCTS is a Principal Consultant for BlueGranite, a Microsoft Business Intelligence Gold Partner. The views expressed in this blog are his own and are not reviewed or endorsed by BlueGranite or Microsoft.
Blogroll
There are a number of ways to automate backups of Analysis Services databases.  Some examples I've seen: SSIS Packages, PowerShell, SQL Agent jobs with XMLA.  Here is a "quick and dirty" way using a .vbs cscript that can be called form the operating system, or schedul... [More]
Microsoft recently released the latest version of its SQL Server platform: SQL Server 2008. Like its predecessors, the new release is a bundle of components that work together to deliver a seamless and integrated BI platform. The 2008 version includes numerous performance enhancements that w... [More]
Business Intelligence (BI) often invokes images of sophisticated, complex technologies that organizations sometimes feel they’re “not ready for yet”.  Often this comes from a feeling that we’re so busy just keeping up with user requests that there’s not enough ti... [More]
1. Install Server 2008 Core x64 from DVD Media   2. Rename computer to new name    Netdom renamecomputer %computername% /newname:SERVER1   3. Lookup the name of the network interface   netsh interface ipv4 show interface   4. Assign IPv4 Address    ... [More]
In my work I often use Microsoft VirtualPC on my laptop to demonstrate software for clients and to conduct training.  Most anyone who's used a VPC to do a demonstration of server-based products--the kind that should be deployed on "real servers"--has at some point had the u... [More]
Windows 2008 shipped recently, and I've been updating my field kit with all of the various installation media and supplemental programs needed for client site deployments. One issue I ran into is when installing the Books Online standalone package on my Vista x64 laptop: "This... [More]
Recently I've been working on methods to display time filters in PerformancePoint M&A that are more user-friendly and efficient for users.  The conventional alternatives--Member Selection, Time Intelligence Post-Back and Time Intelligence Filter--have their strengths, and all of them ... [More]
In a Microsoft BI environment, we very often want to grant data visibility permissions at the datebase level.  The most common way to accomplish this is to use Kerberos delegation.  In Active Directory, delegation comes in two flavors: Constrained and Unconstrained. Constraine... [More]