Dynamics NAV Business Intelligence & Reporting : Business Intelligence

What is new in Dynamics NAV 5.0 Business Analytics (BA)

clausba — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:58:00 GMT

A while a go we released Dynamics NAV 5.0 and with that a new version of Business Analytics Basic and Advanced. I want to spend a few lines of text to share what is new in this release and the reasons for these features making it into the product at this time.

First of all the Advanced client is now up to speed with version 2k5 of the Targit release with everything in that. This gives us support for presenting cubes created in SQL Server Analysis Services 2005.

Of other new things i can add gauges as a way of graphically representing KPIs in a trafficlight way. I also add improved integration with SQL Server Reporting Services.

In BA Basic list of new features looks as follows:

Ability to apply filters on fact tables
(Allows customers with large volumes of data to create cubes containing only subsets of data. Filters can be set by the members of any of the dimensions in a cube)
Create calculations between virtual cubes
(Allows for cross cube calculations to be handled by BA Basic. An example would be having a cube with actual figures and one with budget figures. It would be obvious to create a measure reflecting the deviation between the two. This is possible with this feature)
Multiple active configurations
(In previous version one could have only one active configuration. A configuration is made up of a set of cubes, dimensions etc that are implemented in databases with fixed names (BA for MBS Navision 400). This would mean that whenever a given configuration was implemented the database names etc was overwritten by the new content. In this version the database/configuration name is customizable meaning that you can create configurations that can be updated at differing schedules etc. without interfering with each other)
Support for named instances of SQL Server It is now possible to have the BA databases and or NAV run on something but the default instance in SQL)
Freehand MDX
(This is the ability to create formulas/calculated members that go beyond what the simplistic calculator will enable inside NAV. This is also something that potentially can break the implementation if syntax is wrong in the statements written. This unleashes the power of the language but with the freedom comes responsibility)

In coming posts I will create examples of the usage of each of these features so stay tuned. If you would like to see one over the other leave a comment and I will try to do this.

SQL Server 2005 SP1 has been released

clausba — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 10:29:00 GMT

This release includes SQL Server Express with Advanced Services that includes Reporting Services. The service pack can be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp1.mspx This Service Pack also include tools for SQL Server Express that allows creation...(read more)

22 Free Reporting Services Reports for Dynamics Nav available

clausba — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 10:59:00 GMT

Together with the SQL Server team we released a report pack for Dynamics Nav running on SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. This is done together with a series of other Report Packs that can be seen here.
The Nav Reports will run on the W1 demo database but can easily be customized to run on any database. The Nav Reports can be picked up at the location below:

SQL2005RPNAV.MSI

As we are very interested in feedback please leave comments

Creating a Fiscal Calendar in BA 4.00

clausba — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 12:07:00 GMT

By request I'll briefly run over generating new timedimension in BA. By default BA is not able to create a Fical Calendar that fits the content of the table AccountingPeriodes. Nor is it able to handle calendars from Service. These can however be created manually. It is really simple and requires only editing of the Analysis Services database. It is important to note that changes made this way will not show up in the BA configurator inside Navision and the changes will be overwritten if the configurator is run from inside Navision.

To start editing open Analysis Manager. In the database BA for MBS Navision 400 right click the Shared Dimensions node and choose New Dimension - Wizard as shown below.

Choose Start Schema as the dimension type and click next

In the Select dimension table box select the table wPostingDate that contains a list of dates.

Select Time dimension as the dimension type and make sure that the Date column is set to thedate column.

If you wish to create a Fiscal Calendar where the fiscal year begins in July this is set in the Create time dimension levels box shown below. Valid selections are any month and any given day within that month.

Clicking next will enter the Dimension Editor where advanced settings can be defined and the dimension can be setup to fit more specific needs. Since the dimension at the current point doesn't show a date as the lowest level by a day number this will have to be changed to obtain having a date shown as the lowest level of the dimension. This is done by marking the Day level which is shown in the upper left hand pane and afterwards editing the Member Name Column property in the lower left hand pane.

To have a date shown instead of a number choose DateName and click ok.

Clicking data to browse the dimension will render the result below. Save the dimension and process it.

The dimension can now be added to any cube in the database. Given the fact that the table wPostingDate already is added to some cubes in the Default setup no further editing should be necessary for those cubes when adding the new dimension. If the dimension is added to a cube where the table is not part of an existing dimension the join to the fact table should be specified when adding the cube. This should be done by pointing the column TheDate from wPostingDate to the appropriate datetime column of the fact table.

I is important to note that this works as long as no editing of the setup takes place from inside Navision as it overwrites any manual changes made since the last deployment when running.

The optimal solution to creating a Fiscal time dimension would be extracting the starting period end closing period from the AccountingPeriods table. If the interest is there I will do a post on this at a later point in time. Also please let me know if this was of any help and if you would have suggestions on other topics. My next post will be on incremental updates instead of the default full loads supported by BA. Especially I'm interested in the relevance on posts on Reporting Services in conjunction with Navision.

The components used by Business Analytics 4.00

clausba — Thu, 19 May 2005 03:40:00 GMT

In this post I will outline the components used in BA v.4. This will enable you to get an overview of the underlying technologies and ultimately give you an idea of what it takes to customize the setup delivered by BA.

The major components of Business Analytics are:

The Configurator which is the tool that consumes the XML containing the configuration chosen.
A relational Database in SQL Server 2000
A Set of DTS Packages
A Database in Analysis Services 2000

In this post I will describe in short what DTS is and how it can be used. I’ll also point to further reading. I will also give a short introduction to Analysis Services and here too point to further reading on the subject.

Data Transformation Services (DTS)

When creating a small configuration and running it (I did a demo at the Product Conference this week that I’ll use as an example) you get 4 DTS Packages. A DTS Package contains what ever logic that you as the creator have decided to put in it. The four packages are:

BA for MBS-NAvision 400 – Initialize
BA for MBS-NAvision 400 – Transfer [CRONUS International Ltd.]
BA for MBS-NAvision 400 – Post Process
BA for MBS-NAvision 400 – Process Cubes

This setup is classic in its layout. First some initialization takes place. In this case tables are truncated. Then the actual transfer of the data is taking place. Then some time variables are set, integrity checks are done and finally the cubes are loaded with data.

There are two major online resources for using DTS in BI. One is Best Practices for Using DTS for Business Intelligence Solutions that in detail describes how best practices can be implemented. SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence (SSABI) is more or less best practices implemented. How DTS is used in SSABI is described in this article.

To give a brief overview of what DTS is made up of it can be summed into the following:

Packages
Packages are containers where the logic is executed. A package can contain any Connection, Task, Global Variable and Work flow that are a part of DTS or developed as Custom Tasks etc. A Package can contain other Packages that can be executed and variables can be passed from outer to inner packages. In this way a certain amount of portability can created in DTS. Packages can be saved in SQL Server, as files and as VB projects from where they can be compiled into executables.

Global Variables
Global Variables in DTS is probably the one feature that I like the most about DTS in SQL 2000. It enables the making of packages that can be executed on several different Servers (Dev/Test/Prod) and allows packages and tasks to be configured at runtime and put into context at runtime. This allows for a high degree of reusability for Packages, Connections and Tasks. It is, however, also the one feature that I know of that has caused most errors produced by humans that do not set Variables correctly or have the set themselves from the environment where they are executed. Variables can be used to set Server names, Connection strings, SQL statements etc. at runtime and can be picked up from INI-files, repositories etc.

Connections
A Connection is just what it sounds like – a connection. DTS doesn’t know if it’s a connection used as a source or target. This means that we from a user perspective can expect the same functionality from all connections since they are all exposed in the same way. Connections can be made to any ODBC or OLE DB provider installed on the machine where the package is running.

Tasks
Tasks in DTS can be split into two categories. Tasks that move or manipulate data in some way and tasks that perform other things like FTP or file system tasks. The first Task is the Transform Data Task which is the one used by BA. This Task can move data from one connection to another. Doing so it can manipulate data with one of the built-in data transformations or with a custom built one. This article describes how to use the Transform Data Task in detail. I realize that this is from Version 7 but it is still very useful. It’s also worth mentioning that the Transform Data Task will try to run bulk insert. This depends on several things like the transformation used. If ActiveX Scripting is chosen it will evaluate data on a row by row basis. The next task is the Execute SQL task. This task can execute any SQL statement against a Connection. The last task is the Data Driven Query. This is useful compared to the data pump since it can perform different actions depending on the outcome of the transformation. This means that it is useful in handling Changing dimension where in some cases data should be updated and others inserted. It is also worth mentioning that this task is slow since it evaluates data row by row and for each row executes a SQL Statement. This makes it even slower than the Transform Data Task. For detailed information on the speed have a look at this presentation given by Gert Drapers at SQL Pass.

Work flow
Work flow is what happens between tasks. In other works this is the instrumentation of tasks. There are three different types. On Success, On Error and On Completion. Each of them is self explanatory and I won’t go into detail with each of them.

Scheduling
Scheduling of DTS Packages can be done in any scheduler that can execute a windows command line. This happens through the utility DTSRUN where a series of parameters can execute a Package together with providing values of any Global Variables in the package. To help generate this command line I recommend looking at the utility DTSRUNUI.

Analysis Services

When creating the sample database mentioned before I end up by having one Database in Analysis Services with one Cube and some shared Dimensions.

The database contains a connection to my relational Database. This Database contains the tables specified in the Configurator that is run from inside Navision 4. These tables are, by the way, truncated and loaded from scratch each time the packages are run. This also means that the cube is loaded from scratch and aggregated again each time a load takes place.

With regards to Analysis Services there is also good reading to find in this article on SSABI. For a general intro to Analysis Services and the concepts of OLAP databases this article is worth reading. It goes into detail on the differences between OLTP and OLAP databases. For operations of Analysis Services the white paper Analysis Services Operations Guide is the resource to read. For optimizing performance the white paper Analysis Services Performance Guide is the resource to read.

Database
a database is the container where cubes and dimensions reside. The database can be compared to a relational database where tables and other things reside. The same can be said about Cubes and dimensions in an Analysis Services Database.

Connections
Connections for analysis services is where data for a cube comes from. Connections can be made to any ODBC or OLE DB source (Please pay attention to the fact that there might be limited availability of drivers for the Itanium 64–bit). One cube can only get data from one connection. This means that it is not possible in Analysis Services 2000 to get data from more than one source for one cube without involving other tools like Linked Servers or DTS.

Cubes
A cube is a collection of a data model (Star Schema, Snowflake or 3NF) with measures, dimensions, partitions and aggregations. A cube can come from not only one connection but also one fact table. This means that if one would like to combine more than one fact table say Actuals and Budget it would be impossible in a cube. For this we have Virtual Cubes. Virtual Cubes are like Views in a relational database. They are a logical representation of the underlying cubes. To be able to combine two cubes in a Virtual Cube there must be at least one shared dimension. This could be any dimension in the two cubes.

Shared & Private Dimensions
Dimensions can be shared or private. A shared dimension is available to all cubes in the database and is needed to create a virtual cube (see above). Private Dimensions are created in a cube and can only be used in the cube in which they were created. This doesn’t mean that a private dimension can’t be visible in a Virtual Cube but the behavior is different from a Shared Dimension. When selecting a member from Private Dimension values of measures from other cubes are not affected. Dimensions can come from a single table, a Snowflake and a Parent-Child table.

Security
Security in Analysis Services can be created down to Cell level. This is comparable to row level security in a Relational Database. It is a built-in functionality of Analysis Services but there are several things to keep in mind when designing this. All performance considerations are discussed in the paper Analysis Services Performance Guide. For Operational implications of security these are discussed in Guide. On how to implement security Mosha has a great collection of information on this topic.

Data Mining
Analysis Services has some Data Mining functionality. I’m not an expert on Data Mining but the guys at www.sqlserverdatamining.com are.

/Claus