Or not. Honestly, I don’t know where the time goes. Back in October 2006, I expected to start settling down a bit and develop a better blogging routine. One or two time warps later, I find myself five months since the last post and knee-deep in a variety of time-consuming activities after which I expect to settle down. I have been ultra busy since October, and meanwhile friends and family just wink and nod when I say I’m going to slacken the pace a bit. One of these days.
After the conference season last November, I was looking forward to a nice quiet holiday season, but instead took on a book project. Subject: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. More details forthcoming soon as it’s due to be released in a couple more weeks. It’s a beginner’s book, so no one I know in the industry ought to be reading it. However, my daughter became a convert to database technology seemingly overnight after taking great pains to know as little as possible about computers as she could, so at least one reader has benefited from the effort!
As for conferences this year, I’ll be in Orlando next week for SQL Server Magazine Connections presenting the following topics:
SBI305: Creating Reports with Reporting Services 2005 and Analysis Services 2005
With the introduction of Reporting Services 2005, you now have a Query Designer to generate the MDX required to retrieve data from a cube as a great first step, but you can extend this query to satisfy more complex reporting requirements. In this session, you’ll learn several tips and tricks about working with Analysis Services 2005 as a source for your reports, including how to customize an MDX query, how to handle aggregate values, and how to implement cascading parameterized MDX queries.
SBI306: Integrating SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence with Office SharePoint 2007
Office SharePoint Server 2007 enables consolidation of your business intelligence applications for easy access, analysis, and collaboration across the organization. Come to this session to learn how you can use Office SharePoint Server as a central location for administrators to organize and manage information assets and for information workers to locate, analyze, and personalize information available from Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and other sources.
SBI304: Putting Some Actions into Your Cube
Is your Analysis Services 2005 cube the last stop for users in their quest for information? It doesn’t have to be. In this session, you’ll learn how to add actions that take a cube beyond the basics by displaying transactional details with drillthrough and by linking to internal reports, applications, or external Web sites.
If you can’t make it to Connections, I’ll also be in Orlando again in June for Tech-Ed 2007 with a reprisal of BI integration in Office SharePoint 2007. I hope to see some familiar faces at either of these events.
I’ve been teaching several BI Voyage classes, which was mentioned in my last post at which time we were conducting the beta delivery. It has turned out to be quite a popular class with many rave reviews. I’m pleased to have shared that experience with my friend Peter Myers who has finally allowed himself to take a well-deserved break as he performed the bulk of the deliveries around the globe. I primarily landed in Redmond to deliver the classes, which doesn’t have quite the same ring as, say Paris, or Milan, or Seoul – destinations on Peter’s itinerary. But the students in each of my classes are all amazing people that I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet and hope to cross paths with again someday. My international travel took me to Warsaw, Poland where I had the extra special treat of having a home-cooked Polish meal prepared for me while sharing great conversation with a group of students during what felt like the Great Hurricane of ’07 that swept through Europe in mid-January. Of course, it wasn’t really a hurricane, but it was quite the storm.
A by-product of teaching the BI Voyage classes is the accumulation of a variety of future blog topics which I will start posting after I get back from Orlando next week. I’ve also been spending a lot of time working with SharePoint Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server 2007 so will have some thoughts about these technologies to share. So with the first quarter of 2007 nearly over, thanks to that silly time warp, I have finally accumulated a variety of topics I feel are worthy enough to share and will get the blogs rolling soon. Stay tuned!