September, 2011

This is the first in a series of blog posts I’m doing on ASP.NET vNext.  The next release of Visual Studio includes a bunch of great code editing features (which I’ll blog about more in the future).  Today’s post covers some small, but nice, productivity improvements coming to the HTML Editor which will make it easy to quickly accomplish common tasks.  In particular, Visual Studio will now support the ability to activate the “smart tasks” features of ASP.NET Server Controls, as well...

Over the next few months I’m going to be doing a series of posts that talk about some of the cool new features coming with the next releases of ASP.NET and Visual Studio (which we will start talking about more in the months ahead).  They contain a ton of new functionality and improvements – for both Web Forms and MVC - that I think you’ll really like, and which make building applications easier, faster and better.  I will update this page with links to the individual posts I do as I publish...

A few people have sent me email over the summer about my blog: “hey – does your blog still work?”, “did it move somewhere else?”, “did you die?”.  To provide a few quick answers: my blog does still work, it didn’t move anywhere, and I am not dead.  :-) I fell behind on blogging mostly because I’ve been working pretty hard the last few months on a few new products that I haven’t previously been involved in.  In particular, I’ve been focusing a lot of time on Windows Azure – which is...

This is a follow up to part 1 – dealing with large row sets in the tabular designer . In this post I will show how to import just a subset of your table data to get started, add partitions while you go, and then process the whole model at deployment time. I will demonstrate the technique importing via preview and filter, though obviously you can achieve the same effect using SQL queries for import. Imagine for one moment that AdventureWorks has turned into a mega-conglomerate. Pretend FactInternetSales...

This is the second in a series of blog posts I’m doing on ASP.NET vNext. The vNext releases of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET vNext you’ll see a bunch of really exciting improvements with both Web Forms and MVC – as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post is the first of a few posts I’ll do that talk about some of the improvements coming to Web Forms.  Today’s post covers the new support...

This is the third in a series of blog posts I’m doing on ASP.NET vNext. The next releases of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET vNext you’ll see a bunch of really exciting improvements with both Web Forms and MVC – as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post is the first of three posts I’ll do over the next week that talk about the new Model Binding support coming to Web Forms.  Model Binding...

There are many examples of binding ETB, but I notice they tend to be short on the details of why the example code looks as it does. Maybe it is because we are short on the ‘why’ that people can get a little lost once they want to do something other than the well-documented scenarios (e.g. In/OutArgument binding .) Today I’m going to describe the actual data flow in binding an ETB to an argument or expression, so you can visualize in your head everything involved in binding an ETB...

DirectQuery is to tabular modeling what ROLAP is to multidimensional modeling. It’s a way to get query results from your model in real time without processing data into the model first. You can get started with DirectQuery by perusing some of our MSDN documentation on DirectQuery . Also, Edward Melomed did a DirectQuery overview webcast . Here are some fast facts about DirectQuery, in Q&A format: Q: Why do I have to set DirectQuery modes twice, once on the Model.bim file properties and...

The astute user may notice that the Analysis Services tasks included with Integration Services in BIDS are unchanged for Denali. That is true. The good news is that you can use Integration Services with tabular models. Because the underlying structure of a tabular model is the same as the underlying structure of a multidimensional model, the tasks we already had “just work” with tabular models. I thought about giving you an example of how to use Integration Services to work with tabular models, then...

Managing tabular models is pretty much like managing multidimensional models. We have a full array of tools available for you to use. Here is a summary. SSMS SSMS has the backup , restore , attach , detach , delete , and synchronize features that you would expect. You can also script out from SSMS, browse your cube, and query your cube using MDX. All of these features work the same for multidimensional and tabular models. The only features that are really different for tabular are partitions and...

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on ASP.NET vNext. The next releases of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET vNext you’ll see a bunch of really nice improvements with both Web Forms and MVC – as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post is the second of three posts that talk about the new Model Binding support coming to Web Forms.  Model Binding is an extension of the existing...

//Build/ is finally on! Session schedules are out, and I just wanted to let people know that there will be a couple WF sessions there in case there are any workflow-interested-attendees. Both the sessions are Friday, one at 12:30 PM (Ron Jacobs [twitter] ) and one at 2:00 PM (Josh Twist [twitter] ). “Building event-driven, long-running apps with Windows workflow” (12:30pm) http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-801T “Building apps with Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Azure”...

Today I was writing a batch file to do make a process semi-automatic. One of the non-automatic stages is copy and pasting some text into a web interface. “It’d be pretty cool” I thought, “if I could just add a line to my batch file saying ‘place %text% on clipboard’” Well, it turns out someone else already thought of that! D:\BVT\2.0.690.0>clip /? CLIP Description:     Redirects output of command line tools to the Windows clipboard.     This text output can then be...

In my DirectQuery 101 post, I promised an example of configuring a model with DirectQuery only partitions. Here it is. Imagine for a moment that AdventureWorks has turned into a fast moving mega-conglomerate, with transactions written to FactInternetSales all day long for years and years. Your job is to implement a model that requires up to the minute reporting on all data in Crescent, plus reporting on all data in Excel. It’s fine for Excel users to see the data updated nightly. However, Crescent...

As I mentioned earlier this week there were two WF focused sessions at //build/ this week. Now they’re done, but the videos are available online. Of course, also this week, at //build/ the developer previews of Windows 8, .Net Framework 4.5, and Visual Studio 11 were announced. For VS and .net you can even go download them now and start playing with it straight away. Please read the general info, limitations, etc. first.   Building event-driven, long-running apps with Windows workflow  ...

First of all; credits for this solution goes to a former colleague, and now a contractor working in my department; Erlend Rotvik of WebStep Fokus. The title might be a bit cryptic, so let me elaborate a bit on the subject; until last week or so, it was “common knowledge” that using the NetMsmqActivator together with Queued [...] Blog Post by: larsw

We have this Data Backup property on the .bim file that by default is turned off. You may wonder why this property exists. Let us explore what it is this property does, and why it (and backups in general) are useful in the tabular designer. The Data Backup property specifies whether or not an ABF file is created whenever the .bim file is saved. When you save, we create an ABF backup of the workspace database, so all the data you have processed into the workspace database is preserved. This file is...

By default, when you open the .bim file after closing it, the data comes back. Did you ever wonder where this data comes from? It depends on a number of factors. Let’s explore. Before we begin, I want you to keep a very important point in mind. The metadata in the BIM file is always more important than the data in the workspace database. If there is ever any conflict, the BIM file will always win. You can be assured that the file saved to disk is always the canonical source for metadata in your model...

With a new storage engine comes new processing options. Here are some fast facts about processing tabular models, in Q&A format. What are my processing options? The following table shows the available processing options for each object. Object Available Processing Options Database Process Clear, Process Default, Process Defrag*, Process Full, Process Recalc *See usage note in the Process Defrag section Table Process Clear, Process Data, Process Default, Process Defrag, Process Full Partition...

The Office ACE provider is used to import from text files, Excel files, and Access files. Just like for any data provider, you need to install the provider on both the client side (machine with BIDS) and on the server side (both the machine running the workspace DB instance and the machine running the deployment DB instance). The reasons for this are explained in the impersonation documentation . The BIDS client uses the data provider (and the current user’s credentials) for Preview and Filter, Edit...