This past week I presented on Microsoft Business Intelligence at the Huntsville SharePoint User Group, now officially known as the Rocket City SharePoint user Group.
In the presentation I went over the three main SQL Server Components (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS) and PerformancePoint. Then we went through a live demo of importing some data into SQL Server with SSIS, building a data cube on it with SSAS, and making reports in SSRS and PerformancePoint.
The entire presentation lasted about an hour, and luckily didnt have any major hiccups.
Click here for the presentation (8 MB)
I ran into a problem this week when I wanted to use an Excel file located in SharePoint as a data source in a SSIS project. I had done this before in SSIS 2005, but 2008 turned out to be a little tricky.
The problem I was having was that SSIS could not find the excel file, and through tinkering around gave me several different error messages. I then noticed that I couldn’t browse the sharepoint files via UNC Paths ( \\servername\sitename\library ) from the server, but I could from my desktop. (Note that I am developing on the server, Windows Server 2008 R2, instead of on my desktop – maybe that was the problem to begin with.)
This led me to check on the WebClient service, which was not even listed let alone not started. So, after a little digging it seems that you need to enable the Desktop Experience Feature in Windows Server 2008 to install the WebClient feature, which then lets you connect to SharePoint via UNC paths. After that was installed and the service was started, I was able to connect to my excel file like normal.
Hopefully this can save someone some time and frustration.
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