PerformancePointy: Wade Dorrell's MSDN Blog : proclarity

Treemap + Silverlight => Gasp!

Wade Dorrell — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:25:06 GMT

Microsoft’s Global Product Development team in Europe recently completed its Treemap control for visualizing hierarchical data, seen below. You can read more about it here and leave your feedback.

If you are excited by what you see us doing, check us out at www.joinmicrosofteurope.com/.

You can skip a few steps straight to the demo here: http://www.joinmicrosofteurope.com/TreemapDemo/

Wow!

Putting this in the context of PerformancePoint, remember that you can get a similar visualization in PerformancePoint dashboards by using ProClarity Analytics Server’s “Performance Map” visualization.

Careers at Microsoft Boise

Wade Dorrell — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:36:00 GMT

Every month folks at NETDUG ask if we're hiring, whether they can give resumes to me, what it's like to work for Microsoft in Boise, are we moving to a larger/nicer building in Boise, etc.

You can see all currently available openings on the Microsoft careers site by searching for USA, Boise, ID. This is also where you submit your resume. The hiring managers in Boise get a filtered list of applicants interested in the positions/location, and they'll get in touch with you. If you get an invite to interview in-person in Redmond, but were applying for a Boise position, please question it... the system isn't adapted to non-Redmond hiring yet, and one of our hires had an interview location snafu. (It turned out OK though.) We do most of the in-person interviewing here, and you'll probably talk to one or more Redmond folks on the phone.

You can give resumes to me, and I can pass them along to hiring managers, although they can't really take action on them... you'll have to post it on the Microsoft careers site as well.

As for what it's like: it rocks. With PerformancePoint team you're working in a consolidating, growing, market with plenty of room for differentiation. In Boise, you're working with a tight-knit, fun-loving group who's experience in the BI space (lots of ex-ProClarity development and test people around!)

As for if, where, when, and how we are moving: if I could tell you, I would, and when I can, I will. (Update: We moved to the Idaho Independant Bank Building, we occupy a good part of the 4th floor, and the entire 5th and 6th floors.)

(And what's NETDUG? I facilitate the .NET Developer User Group's use of our training room here at the Microsoft Boise office every month, 3rd Thursday, at 7PM. If you're C#-y, TDD-like, agile-ist, or interested in any way in .NET developer technologies (Microsoft's typically, but anything goes), this is a pretty sweet group, and we'd be happy to see you. It's free. There's sometimes pizza and swag. There's always plenty of geekery. And there are lots Boise employment opportunities discussed beyond Microsoft's. That's NETDUG.)

Changing the background color of ProClarity Performance Map (aka Heat Map)

Wade Dorrell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:45:50 GMT

Customers often want to set the background color of analytic visualizations such as the ProClarity charts & grids, to match a corporate or dashboard theme. Unlike the ProClarity charts & grids, it's not possible to set the background color of the heat map visualization within ProClarity Professional... it's always a cream color... but it can be changed through a simple modification to the PAS server CSS files.

The color is defined per-language in <PAS virtual directory>/<PAS language>/src/treeview.css:

body {
    height: 100%;
    margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    width: 100%;
    background-color: #ece9d8;
}

Feel free to change it for each language pack. Although it's unlikely a PAS service pack or hotfix would update this file, you may have to re-apply the changes after installing a SP or hotfix.

The downside to all of this is it's a global change, affecting all heat maps rendered by the PAS server. I have visions of using URL-rewrite to make this dynamic per heat map instance, but unless someone wants to make my vision reality, that's all it is for the moment.

Google charting

Wade Dorrell — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:59:12 GMT

I was toying around with FriendFeed and discovered Google's charting engine. Mmm, pie:

The engine can render Google Analytics-esque sparklines too. The simplicity and accessibility of this API is impressive... it's all in the URL.

Now, I'm a bit agitated by this discovery, as years ago at ProClarity Greg & I built very similar to this API for doing sparklines, bullet graphs, and other datawords. I haven't shared it with you yet, and I should have. While it was no complete charting engine, and neither is Google's, our implementation was all of 300 lines of C#... so you could probably build & modify the implementation for your own specific needs pretty easily. Please let me know if you want it, and I'll throw it up on Codeplex.

The major downside of our & Google's architecture is your data is relayed in the GET URL. It's getting replicated in logs. In Google's case, it's sent naked across the Internet (invalid certificate/no HTTPS), and aggregated in Google's data centers. According to the TOS this service cannot be relied on for uptime or continued compatibility. It will break for FriendFeed someday. Of course, free isn't always free! There's definitely some reasons to figure out how to host your own implementation on LAN & with security if you're using this for sensitive data or critical applications, and I should have shared it long ago.

The Big Red One (Obligitory First Post)

Wade Dorrell — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:49:00 GMT

We used to call the initial bar chart view you get in ProClarity "The Big Red One", because it's a single red bar. (Representing the default cell... all the default members for the current user.)

We now call it "The Big Blue One" because in 6.x, the color of the 1st bar in a chart changed to blue.

It's still just one out of "a million" places you could start an analysis, and it's not even close to being the most relevant place.