Ralph Kimball vs. Bill Inmon

I came Across this wonderful comparison between Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon in the way data marts Should be built I decided to share it on my blog for your reference

Areas of agreement

• Consensus on need for solid business requirements and end-user validation
• Agreement that it is rarely feasible to build an entire warehouse at once - incremental development with a focus on high-priority elements
• Conformed dimensions are desirable
• Warehouse data needs to be tracked as atomically as possible
• Star schema is most desirable format for data marts

Areas of differences

• Bill Inmon
  • Approach is known as Top-Down, or Corporate Information Factory
  • Warehouse data should be stored in a centralized relational structure
  • Dependent data marts should be created from central warehouse
    • These data marts will employ star schemas
    • Additional transformations may be employed between the warehouse and the data marts
  • ODS is used for transaction level detail with little to no history

Inmon Kimball

• Ralph Kimball
  • Approach is known as Bottom-Up, or Kimball Bus Architecture
  • “… The data warehouse is nothing more than the union of all the data marts …”
  • Conformed dimensions are the glue which unite disparate data marts, while Inmon maintains conformed dimensions within centralized relational structure
  • ODS may be integrated directly into warehouse

Office 2010 Features List

I came across an amazing list of features from Office 2010 I decided to publish it here for reference

Here’s what is known, at this point:

• The next version of Office is codenamed Office 14
• A private Technical Adoption Program (TAP) alpha test-build of Office 14 — at least until recently — was slated for November or December 2008
• Microsoft officials have been dropping hints over the past year that Office 14 would ship in 2009
• Office 14 will include a local Office client, a server (SharePoint) and Office Web applications components

Microsoft officials are continuing to decline to comment on Office 14’s timetable or feature list. Nonetheless, there have been a few bits of information about O14 which have gone public. Among them:

• Office 14 will include more “ribbonized” versions of the core set of client apps
• The Web applications will go to a limited number of non-Microsoft testers before the end of this calendar year. (A broader test build of Office Web apps won’t happen until 2009, and the testing program for these Webified Office apps won’t be tied to the rest of the Office 14 beta.)
• Master data management (MDM) will be “aligned with”the Office 14 release in some way

Upgrade SharePoint SQL Express to Standard or Enterprise

Source : Todd Klindt's SharePoint Admin Blog

Microsoft so very graciously provides a free version of SQL 2005, SQL Express, with MOSS. If you install MOSS using the Basic option or Single Server under Advanced you get SQL Express automatically. So what if as a budding newbie SharePoint admin you chose the Basic option, but now as a wise aged SharePoint admin you've seen the error of your ways and want to use a more respectable version of SQL for your SharePoint backend? You're in luck. In this blog post I'll walk you through upgrading SQL Express to SQL Standard or Enterprise.

First thing you need to do is get a copy of SQL 2005 Standard or Enterprise. Which version you choose depends on the redundancy and availability you want. Either will upgrade from Express. After you have your media you can start the install. This step is important as you have to pass the setup program a parameter to let it know you're doing an upgrade. To upgrade use the command setup.exe SKUUPGRADE=1. It should look like this:

The setup should kick off and it won't give you any indication that you passed it a parameter. Never fear, it will come up later. When the setup gets to the instance selection make sure you don't accept the default instance and you choose the SQL Express instance. First click Installed Instances:

Then choose the OFFICESERVERS instance from the list and hit OK:

Your next screen should confirm that it found SQL Express:

If you click the Details… button you'll see that the setup confirms that SQL Express can be upgraded. This step is optional.

At this point you can Close the box and hit OK until the setup is finished. After the setup is finished you'll want to apply SP2 for SQL 2005 and any post SP2 patches that are available. I don't know if it's required but I always do an IISRESET after this to make sure that SharePoint reconnects properly to SQL.

That's all there is to it. Once you are using full SQL you have quite a few more options available to you like log shipping, database replication, SQL Profiler and more. If you have any questions about how to leverage those tools with SharePoint, leave me a comment and let me know.

tk

Try your Reports Before Publishing it

I’ve came a cross a site that gives you an option to publish your reports online and see it working before adding it to your site try it. It’s An Amazing Idea

http://www.reportsurfer.com

Report Surfer is a community site for users to upload, share and run sample reports built on Microsoft's SQL Reporting Services platform

Integrating CS2007 with Moss 2007

So, if you have been wanting waiting to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 in conjunction with Commerce Server 2007, this is the whitepaper for you.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2AEB1A5E-43B8-483B-8CB2-86C0E82BF0AB&displaylang=en

This document covers the topics needed to take Commerce Server data and services and make them visible in portal sites based on Office SharePoint Server 2007. Samples are provided to show how to make custom Web parts that access the Commerce Server APIs.

Microsoft Office 2010

Microsoft released some information about SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010, this is conslidated list with information released till now

• Announcing SharePoint Server 2010 Preliminary System Requirements
• Office 2010 the movie
• Microsoft Office 2010 IT Blog
• Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work
• Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools

• http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/02/19/sharepoint-tools-support-in-visual-studio.aspx
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/VisualStudio/Sharepoint-Development-with-Visual-Studio-2010/
• http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/0/9/C0965791-049B-4200-9008-F07A783026F6/VisualStudio2010_ProductOverview.pdf

Live webinar: Accelerate the deployment and provisioning of your SharePoint e-learning platform

Challenges faced by today’s educational institutions typically lie in three main areas: efficiency, security, and accuracy. When it comes to building a Microsoft based e-learning platform, thousands of students, teachers, and parents’ accounts should be provisioned for tens or hundreds of your schools on an interrelated set of Microsoft application servers such as Active directory, SharePoint, Exchange, and Office Communication Server (OCS). In reality, these activities are painful. In such large-scale deployments of Microsoft Learning Gateway (MLG) or other connected e-learning solutions, manual provisioning becomes practically impossible. Consider data incompleteness and inconsistency. And add the fact that mass provisioning is needed every new academic year and ongoing re-provisioning is needed through the year.
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