BI-NSIGHT – Power BI (Pride, Gantt Visual, Windows Dev Center Content Pack, Custom Visual Sandboxing) – SQL Server 2016 (RC0, Reporting Services & Analysis Services Update, SSDT, Linux)
It has been another busy week in the Microsoft BI world, and amazing things still coming out from the Power BI Team, and it appears that SQL Server 2016 is full steam ahead which is great to see.
Here is my weekly BI-NSIGHT round up.
Power BI – Pride
What this is, is for you to let the rest of the world know why you enjoy or possibly even love working with Power BI. And the opportunity for it to be shown at the upcoming Data Insights summit.
You have to submit it by 11 March 2016.
You can find more details here: Share your Power BI and Excel pride with the world!
Power BI – Gantt Visual
This is another great visual from Microsoft and one that will be used to track projects or a timeline of events.
This would be really good, when overlaying it with other key information.
You can find out more details about the visual here: Visual Awesomeness Unlocked – Gantt chart
Power BI – Windows Dev Center Content Pack
Another week, and another great content pack from Microsoft. This week it is for the Windows Dev Center, which is where you can use the information to track all the information relating to your app (ratings, reviews, etc..)
If you do use Windows Dev Center you can find out more details here: Visualize your Windows Dev Center analytics data with Power BI
Power BI – Custom Visual Sandboxing
What this is, is the ability to be able to develop your Custom Visual so that it will not affect other things in the APIs or within the Power BI framework, as far as I can understand.
They do go into more details, but I think that this is a smart move because it allows the development process to be completed in isolation.
You can find all the details here: Custom visual authors: Sandboxing is coming and here’s what you need to know
SQL Server 2016 – RC0
Finally, we have got a release candidate for SQL Server 2016.
Whilst there was not a massive lot of additional features to the product line up, I have no doubt that a lot of the code or underlying technology is starting to be ironed out.
There were some features which I will cover in the sections below, but from a purely SQL Database Engine standpoint it is great to see that now you can have scoped configuration. Which gives you the ability to be able to have specific settings in different databases and does not have to be server wide.
You can find out the details here: Technical Overview: SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate 0
SQL Server 2016 – Reporting Services Update
It is great to see that SSRS is getting some more attention and has some new features which is great.
There has been a whole host of updates that have happened already, but in this release is the ability to be able to pin your SSRS items to a Power BI Group.
They have also simplified the configuration and management of the Data Caching and Refreshing. Which is great to see as I did feel that there were almost too many options that at times could confuse the users.
You can find out all the SSRS Updates here: Get more done in the new Reporting Services web portal with SQL Server 2016 RC0
SQL Server 2016 – Analysis Services Update
There are quite a few updates for SSAS.
The first one might seem fairly simple, but it is something that I thought was lacking in the past. And to now be able to have display folders does make it that much more manageable. As well as easier for the end users to navigate.
The user of PowerShell and SSIS against the new tabular model is something that I would have expected to be in the product. And great to see that it is there already.
And finally to see that it now is an Object Model is really great and can make the development process that much easier.
You can find the SSAS details here: What is new in SQL Server Analysis Services 2016 RC0
SQL Server 2016 – SQL Server Data Tools Update
There has been a February update for SSDT, which includes a lot of the new features that are available for SQL Server 2016.
You can find the details and download link here: SQL Server Data Tools Preview update for Feb 2016
SQL Server 2016 – SQL Loves Linux
This was something that was totally unexpected. But to me it makes perfect sense. Linux is a big platform and a lot of people use it. And to be honest SQL Server is really simple and easy to use.
Now you can leverage the best of both of you have Linux servers.
You can read about the announcement here: Announcing SQL Server on Linux