Varigence, Inc.

Microsoft has recently started a new program called SSAS Maestros.  An extremely deep technical training course on Analysis Services, which includes labs and even a take home exam project.  

There were hundreds of applicants and eighty-one attendees.  From that pool Microsoft recently announced their first class of 11 SSAS Maestros, and I'm happy to congratulate my colleague John Welch for being part of this elite group!

I work with John, so I can honestly say I'm not surprised to hear about this, but nevertheless it's a great honor for him.  Way to go John, and congrats to the other ten Maestros!

This is the first blog entry focused on helping users prepare for the $10,000 Biml Challenge. This will get you a basic understanding of the BI markup language, Biml.

Biml is an XML-based language for specifying the full set of assets in a BI and/or DW project. With Biml you can design everything from relational databases, to data integration and transformation packages, and OLAP cubes. The Biml language is fully specified online. The rest of the blog entry will give a more informal look into how to use Biml.

Biml works in a way consistent with other XML-based languages. If you want to define something in Biml, specify the element for that item. For example,

When you have a technology that drastically increases the productivity of BI and Data Warehouse developers and architects, it can be difficult to convey just how groundbreaking it is. We believe Mist & Biml are such products.  Once you have the chance to use them, you'll never want to go back to the old way of building your data solutions.

This year at PASS Summit (October 2011, Seattle, WA), we're putting our money where our mouth is by sponsoring the $10,000 Biml Challenge during the exhibition.  

The contestant who solves a typical BI/DW task assigned in the competition the fastest will win $10,000 cash.  This task would normally require hours or longer with traditional approaches, but with Biml and Mist, the time limit will be a generous 15 minutes.

Vivid provides the ability to do two things with drillthrough that are not supported by SQL Server Analysis Server (SSAS) or Excel: (1) Drillthrough on a calculated measure and (2) drillthrough in the presence of multiselect filters.  In this entry you’ll learn about how Vivid successfully handles both of these.

Drillthrough on Calculated Measures

Drillthrough on calculated measures is difficult to get right for a variety of reasons (http://www.biblogs.com/2008/09/01/drillthrough-on-calculated-measures/).  For example, assume the following calculation: