While the introduction of native support for sparklines and other microcharts in Excel 2010 was welcome, Excel is still lacking more advanced visualisation features. I came across Sparklines for Excel – a free Excel addin that gives you a lot of extra charting options, not just sparklines – a while ago but I’ve only just got round to playing with it and I have to say it’s a lot of fun. I’m not much of a data visualisation expert (I’ll leave that to the likes of Jen) but it’s a subject that every BI professional needs a passing knowledge of and in any case it’s a shiny new toy to play with, so it’s worth a blog post.

What I like most of all about Sparklines for Excel is that everything is driven from Excel formulas, and no VBA is required. That means you can make every aspect of the charts you create data-driven, and this holds a fundamental appeal for the data geek in me.  Let’s take creating a treemap as an example, and start with an Excel 2010 worksheet hooked up to the Adventure Works cube using some Excel cube functions plus some thresholds telling us whether the values for Gross Profit Margin are good or bad:

We can then simply click on an empty cell and then click on the Treemap button in the ribbon, fill in some ranges, and we get the following formula:

=Treemap(D5:D10,C15:I29,,,E5:E10,G5:H9,C5:C10)

And this treemap in the worksheet (I won’t even try to apologies for the colour scheme):

Cool, eh? And of course, as soon as you change the dropdown filter to select another year, or change any of the threshold values, the treemap updates too. Even the position, length and width of the treemap itself can be parameterised.

You can see the full list of chart types – including heat maps, cascade charts and Pareto charts – in the manual here. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re an SSAS or PowerPivot user who’s into data visualisation and on a tight budget.

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It does not matter what product or service you have the business with, one of the most valuable things here is your ability to sell it or offer it in the correct way so that to reach your business success. You should know and be able to propose your product or service to the clients in a way they agree to buy it. Your task is not only to offer, but to prove the customers that your product is worth that cash it has and that it is very useful for them. One more essential thing is to realize who you are going to sell your product to. Considering all these peculiarities it is possible to make a conclusion that for the successful business leading you should get some extra skills and be able to use the skills on practice.

For the proper running of your business you will have to know how to manage finances correctly. But remember that controlling of your business finances is not the same as managing of your personal money. Your business money management is valuable for your profits.

If you do not possess any knowledge in that industry, you may type how to manage my finances in the web search engine and read some essential suggestions, as if you do not know and do not understand how to manage finances properly you will lead the struggle so that to get your profits. It is always recommended to use some additional literature and read the extra business data. Possessing the business skills is very useful for the successful business building. Catching the additional data you will not only be aware of how to control finances, you will also know how to earn cash, various methods of its making and the usefulness of personal finance software that business owners frequently use.

As a new business master you will face with many additional questions that you should pay your attention to and if you have the interest in your making cash possibility you should master the required skills. Organizational skills are also very essential, because you will not be able to control all aspects in business at once. You should not be able to husband your money only; you should obviously be aware of how to control time you spend on your business running. What does business running imply? Firstly it implies in itself making money. Skills that are necessary for any business beginner or entrepreneur should be mastered by you, because there is no any person in the world who does not desire to earn much cash and to know how to build their personal business strategy that will bring the huge returns. Try to budget your capital and own some money reserves. This will help you much coping with any business problem you may face with.

Over the last few years I’ve been doing more and more training – my MDX, SSAS cube design and performance tuning courses continue to be extremely popular – and I’ve also seen how successful preconference seminars at conferences like SQLBits have become. It’s my opinion that there’s significant demand for SQL Server training that is either at a more advanced level than the big training companies can offer, or that covers niche topics that the big training companies would never bother with such as MDX. Equally, I believe that more experienced developers would rather be taught by people like them, who have used a technology in the field, written books and blog posts, and have real-world knowledge, rather than professional trainers who (by definition) spend most of their time training.

That’s why I have decided to launch a new training company to offer expert-level SQL Server training in the UK: Technitrain. Not only will I be running all my public training courses through it, but I’ll also be offering training courses by other respected SQL Server MVPs, authors, bloggers and speakers. Here’s my initial course schedule:

Advanced SQL Server Internals and Troubleshooting, with Christian Bolton. 6th-7th December 2011

Introduction to Master Data Services, with Jeremy Kashel. 17th February 2012

Real World Analysis Services Cube Design and Performance Tuning, with Chris Webb. 9th-10th February 2012

From Zero to SSIS, with Andy Leonard. 5th-9th March 2012

Introduction to MDX, with Chris Webb. 21st-23rd March 2012

I’m really excited to be working with the likes of Christian, Jeremy and Andy for this first group of courses – they really are the acknowledged experts in their particular areas. All the courses will be run in central London, so they will not only be convenient for anyone in the UK but also easily accessible for attendees from Europe or further away.

Finally, I’d like your help in making my new company a success. But don’t worry, I’m going to pay you for it! If you run a user group, a small consultancy, a training company or are a contractor or a blogger, you may be interested in my affiliate programme. You can find more details on the site, but basically I will pay 20% of the price of the course for each registration that an affiliate sends my way. For example, for Andy Leonard’s SSIS course that means I’ll pay £399 per registration in commission – which hopefully is enough motivation for you to mention these courses to your friends, colleagues, customers, blog readers, Twitter followers and so on.

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How to manage my finances for the improvement of business? Have you ever had the interest in this question? If you ask any business owner what worries them most of all, they will possibly answer that this is the correct control of money and successful running of business. Many individuals suppose that it is very easy to husband finances till the time they decide to create their own business.

When you consider your business building you begin to consider how to manage finances in the way you reach your business wealth. Life would seem much easier if the income was bigger than expenses. Analyzing this situation you as a business owner begin to search for the present methods of managing money. It would be great if you could distribute your expenses from one month to the next one. The creation of your private business requires your reasonable cash investment. It is not right to think that the most effective way of managing your cash is economizing it on your bank account. On the one hand, it is correct, but on the other hand, it is better you think about some other ways of controlling your finances. Many people trust that bank programs are very secure and checked. That is why bank will be able to control your cash in the right way so that you receive the advantage from any program. Considering cash you should think once more, as it is a well-known fact that money should be invested so that to grow and bring the extra income to you. Making the additional income may be the main cause why you make a decision to build your private business. The sphere of business may be various and you can select any industry you have knowledge in.

When a person is looking for a sphere of his/her business building, he/she usually tries to select the one that promises them the fast and big returns. It is known to every individual that to forecast business situation in the world is impossible, as there are constantly ups and downs in business and when each of them is going to happen is not known. That is why it is very valuable for you to husband your money in the right way, because if you have the crisis and do not have economized money you will occur in the bankruptcy situation. Managing you money implies in itself controlling your wastes firstly. What do these words imply? These words have the sense that firstly you should be able to distribute your budget. That means that you should obviously know how much money you are able to spend on your personal needs and how much money it is possible to save. Economizing plays a very big role in business improvement. If you cannot economize, you will waste all money on needs and on the items that are not required for you, but they are just your personal desire. Inability to economize cash will not lead you to the reasonable money control. Use your personal finance software so that to count your wastes for a month. Set your goals and stick to all effective ways to grow and develop your business.

As I mentioned a few months back, some new functionality snuck into SSAS with SQL 2008 R2 SP1, the most interesting of which is a new Profiler event called Resource Usage (Thomas Ivarsson recently blogged about some other new events too). I’ve been doing some investigations on it recently, and asking the SSAS dev team what the information it returns actually means (Akshai Mirchandani is the source for much of the content of this post and I’m very grateful for his help), so I thought I’d blog my findings.

When you’re defining a new trace, you can find the Resource Usage event in the Query Processing section as shown below:

It is raised immediately after a query has finished executing (in which case it follows the Query End event):

It is also raised after any XMLA command has finished executing, and this means you’re also able to use it to monitor the resource usage of a processing operation:

Essentially, it gives you information that is very similar to what’s already available in Perfmon but specific to a particular query or command. The problem with Perfmon is that it’s easy to spot strange things happening in the data it gives you, but there’s no sure-fire way of linking what you see in Perfmon back to individual events such as queries executing; the Resource Usage event solves this problem.

Here’s a breakdown of the data returned by the event:

• READS: The number of disk read operations tracked for this query
• READ_KB: The size of disk reads in KB
• WRITES: The number of disk write operations tracked for this query
• WRITE_KB: The size of disk writes in KB
• CPU_TIME_MS: The CPU time as measured in milliseconds for this query (although this seems to bear very little relation to the CPU time shown elsewhere in Profiler – perhaps it is only the CPU time for the Storage Engine?)
• ROWS_SCANNED: The number of rows scanned (decoded/filtered/aggregated) by the Storage Engine for this query
• ROWS_RETURNED: The number of rows resulting from the scans after decoding/filtering/aggregation by the Storage Engine for this query

The data returned relates purely to Storage Engine operations as far as I can see and does not relate to the Formula Engine – I get no values back for queries that hit the Storage Engine cache but are nonetheless slow because they are Formula Engine bound.

To investigate things further, I took a look at three queries (slightly modified to run on my antique version of Adventure Works) from Jeffrey Wang’s recent post on prefetching, which illustrate scenarios where the Storage Engine does radically different amounts of work; they’re particularly interesting because Jeffrey describes in detail what goes on in the Storage Engine when each of them run. First of all, the first test query from Jeffrey’s post where prefetching does not take place gives me the following values for Resource Usage on a cold cache:

READS, 8
READ_KB, 361
WRITES, 0
WRITE_KB, 0
CPU_TIME_MS, 15
ROWS_SCANNED, 18210
ROWS_RETURNED, 337

On a warm cache (ie in a situation where the Storage Engine does not need to go to disk because it can get the values it needs from cache) I get the following values:

READS, 0
READ_KB, 0
WRITES, 0
WRITE_KB, 0
CPU_TIME_MS, 0
ROWS_SCANNED, 0
ROWS_RETURNED, 0

Here’s Jeffrey’s second query, where an acceptable amount of prefetching is taking place:

select [Internet Sales Amount] on 0,
head(descendants([Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year].[2003],[Date].[Calendar].[Date]), 32) on 1
from [Adventure Works]

On a cold cache this is what I get from Resource Usage, showing slightly more activity going on:

READS, 16
READ_KB, 738
WRITES, 0
WRITE_KB, 0
CPU_TIME_MS, 15
ROWS_SCANNED, 36932
ROWS_RETURNED, 693

If we now look at Jeffrey’s third query, where he shows a scenario where excessive prefetching is taking place:

select [Internet Sales Amount] on 0,
head(descendants([Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year].[2003],[Date].[Calendar].[Date]), 33) on 1
from [Adventure Works]

Here’s what I get on a cold cache from Resource Usage:

READS, 32
READ_KB, 1889
WRITES, 0
WRITE_KB, 0
CPU_TIME_MS, 46
ROWS_SCANNED, 74655
ROWS_RETURNED, 63831

It’s clear from these numbers that a lot more work is going on in the Storage Engine compared to the previous two queries, although I’m not sure it’s worth trying to read too much into what the exact values themselves actually represent (unless of course you happen to be Jeffrey). I think it’s also going to be dangerous to make simplistic general recommendations about these values: while in some cases trying to keep the values returned as low as possible will be a good idea, I’m pretty sure there are going to be other situations where a more efficient query would involve more reads from disk, or scanning or returning more rows, than a less efficient version of the same query would. That said, this is useful and interesting information and another weapon in the arsenal of the SSAS consultant out in the field trying to diagnose why a query is slow and what can be done to tune it.

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Relying on the statistics it becomes clear that the majority of business failures occur as the businessmen are not aware of how to manage finances in the right way. Almost all of them feel the absence of cash control skills. The total picture is not very positive, but you as a person who has your own business or maybe you have only the projects as for its creation can change the case and achieve the wealth in your business without any troubles.

The most frequent concern that interests any businessman is how to manage my finances. Generally all you need to do is to plan, understand and manage where and when you spend your made cash. You should realize the inflows and outflows of money in your business process.

Revising the information you can see that there are a lot of small businesses that have had their success only for a year and then they failed. All this happens due to the incorrect understanding of cash management procedure. However, there is also another case that you can see where a lot of small businesses have their success yearly and all this is due to the correct work of the accountants. Controlling of your finances is not the point you should treat about only in the end of the year. These days personal finance software is easily accessible for you and you as a businessman have a great opportunity to count your whole budget in the right way with its help. Fiscal management is the concern that should disturb you constantly, because if you think about the correct control of your business money only once in a year, then you should be prepared to that your business will face with the fiscal crisis soon. Any business requires more frequent revising and usually it depends on the business size you have and also on what business purposes you settle.

Management of finances is a very essential part of any business. If you can do it well, this will define your business success for long time. It does not play a very huge role whether you are an advanced businessman or you are only planning the creation of your private business. It is said that any businessman being on any stage of his/her business should know how to make money and get the appropriate skills in the industry of money control. There are always some risks in cash management sphere, but business is a danger and all businessmen who have their serious work are always in their dangerous case, because business is impossible to forecast, especially its successes and failures.

You should find out your keys to success. Try to make your own business project and develop the fiscal management planning. With its help you will be able to control all cash you earn and make more cash next month. Set your definite aims and try to realize them.

This is probably the 5th or 6th post I’ve written on this problem (most deal with MDX, but I did blog about solving it in DAX early last year) but what can I say – it’s an interesting problem! I came across it at work today while working with the 2012 CTP3 version of PowerPivot and found yet another solution to the problem that used some of the new DAX functionality, so I thought I’d crank out one more blog post.

The basic approach is similar to the one I describe here. Using the same Adventure Works data, I can load the DimDate and FactInternetSales tables into PowerPivot V2.0 and I’ll get the following model:

Note that we have three relationships between the two tables: one active one, which is the relationship from OrderDateKey to DateKey, and two inactive ones from DueDateKey and ShipDateKey. If we want to find the number of orders up to the current date using the Order Date we can simply use the following DAX in a measure definition:

SalesToDate:=CALCULATE(
COUNTROWS(FactInternetSales)
, DATESBETWEEN(DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey], Blank(), LASTDATE(DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey])))

Now, if we want to find the number of orders that have shipped up until yesterday we don’t need any special modelling, we can use the new UseRelationship function to force a calculation to follow the relationship going from ShipDateKey to DateKey. Therefore, if we want to find the number of orders that have been placed but not shipped, we just need to take the measure above and subtract the vale returned by the same measure when use this different relationship and change the filter context to be the day before the current day:

SalesInProgress:=[SalesToDate]-
IF(ISBLANK(DATEADD(LASTDATE(DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey]), -1, DAY))
, BLANK()
,CALCULATE(
[SalesToDate]
, USERELATIONSHIP(FactInternetSales[ShipDateKey], DimDate[DateKey])
, DATEADD(LASTDATE(DimDate[FullDateAlternateKey]), -1, DAY)))

Quite an elegant solution, I think.

Like this:

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Do you consider the opportunity of your own business creation? Do you desire to create your own business and get rid of your financial problems? Then you should firstly learn how to manage finances wisely. The correct managing of cash is inevitable for the wealthy business creation. If you wish to make finances either at home or with the help of the web, it is a very important task for you to be able to control your cash. There are a lot of productive methods that will help you learn in what way to control money wisely.

One of the productive money managing methods is to learn budgeting. What does it mean? Usually it means that for a reasonable management of your money, you should firstly be aware of how to budget it. Budgeting is necessary for you to be aware of how much money you are going to spend on this or that item. Money should be fully controlled by you. If you cannot do it on your own, you may use personal finance software with the help of which each dollar will be controlled. You should surely know what items you purchase and where your money goes. If you are not aware of where your cash goes, it is not possible to purchase something wisely. Your business should possess the settled budget. All cash you earn and possess should be managed by you. The more you control the more order in business you possess. When you learn in what way to budget your money this will help you reach the stability in business. The very essential point here is that you will not be scared of any crisis case if you have the settled and firm budget in business. You will simply economize while budgeting money you earn.

One more method for the productive managing of cash is saving. How to manage my finances point is very interesting for a lot of businessmen, but it is not possible to master this rule if you are not able to save. Saving is stated as one of the best methods to husband cash you earn. When you earn the definite sum of money it is advised by many specialists to divide this sum and economize one part of it for the future. It will be simpler for your business to cope with various fiscal problems if it has some saved cash. Try to save your cash in bank or make your wise investments that will bring your business the great returns. The creation of any business requires some budget. That is why you should not spend all cash on the things you desire to possess. Try to spend finances on the improvement of your business. Saving is valuable for your business balance.

If you desire to create your successful business you should get rid of your present debts. Getting some debts will make you spend much money monthly. That means that you do not have the possibility to economize money and control it correctly. With such picture your business may have the serious troubles, as each month you have your regular payments, except the common payments, such as your electricity bills or phone bills.

So, how to manage my money is an interesting thing for any person who wishes to earn real money. It is very difficult to learn how to do it in the right way, but if you really desire to become a wealthy businessman, it is your task to husband money wisely to avoid the financial problems.

In what way should I manage my finances? This very question is asked by a lot of people nowadays, especially by businessmen who are interested in making cash possibility and who really want to be aware of all possible methods of the correct money management. Individuals who make money usually work very hard in order to make the necessary quantity for their good living, but they feel the lack of skills in money management sphere.

The majority of them are not aware at all how to manage finances and think that various financial organizations that exist today will save and husband their money correctly. Considering investments it is worth to point out that really fiscal organizations manage them, but if speaking about everyday spending of your finances they do not mind this process. If you wish to manage your daily cash, then you should realize that this is only your task, but not financial organizations.

For this to do correctly you are to make your personal business plan. So that to make your plan successfully, you should be aware of some prime cash management tips. If you have the interest in this and want to be aware of how to manage finances correctly, below you will find out money management tips that will help you receive the additional skills and learn how to control your cash in the correct manner.

The first very step is your project. Planning is very important in managing of your finances. You should define the purposes you have and strictly know what you should reach in the future. Take a notebook and write down all your purposes. When you set your business goals, you will know what to do then and in what way to act in order to reach your wealth in business. Do not forget that all your aims should be realistic. It is a very big mistake if you settle the unreal business aims, because if you do not have the chance to realize these purposes in reality you lose your motivation. That is why it is better to settle the goals that are real for accomplishing and stay motivated. Setting your business purposes is very essential for any business development.

The second step is the creation of your budget. Following this tip you should create the specialized project that will be productive for economizing of your cash. Define the real budget and be assured in that the plans you create are made according to your business interests. There is no any individual who will care about your cash, except you.

You should also pay attention to the existence of personal finance software. With the help of this software you are able to calculate your inflows and outflows. Personal fiscal software will help you manage and see your wastes. The diversity between your income and wastes is very important for business improvement.

In order to be a good businessman you should try to get the additional knowledge about finances. Money is not easy to make. It requires amateur skills and experience. So, try not to waste your cash on your wants. It is better to spend it on your business requirements and after that you will see your business progress.

Each year individuals usually try to make their plans concerning their cash on the next year. A lot of individuals are worried by this question, especially those individuals who have their business. There are many dreams they have and one of them is financial freedom. How could you achieve your money freedom if you have a lot of debts? First of all, leading your business your task is to get rid of all your present debts. It is a very essential point, because it is impossible to possess the wealthy business with great number of debts. So, what should you do in order to achieve your financial freedom? You should study how to manage finances correctly and use your personal finance software in order to count your daily or monthly wastes. When you get rid of your money difficulties you will be able to free yourself from many other difficulties that are connected with cash. The ability to husband money will enlarge your chances to lead your successful business.

So, how should you learn to control your cash? What should you do? It is suggested by many professionals to gather all your payments and different bills and define how much cash you spend. The question concerning in what way to manage my finances worries many people and all of them want to be aware of all possible ways in order to manage money correctly. You can make your fiscal planning. This will help you stabilize the diversity between your wastes and your income. You should control how much money you spend. If you spend more than you make, then running of your business cannot be wealthy and that is the first cause of your debts. Write your income and try to do all your best in order to improve your business income. The more you earn the more you can waste. Make your budget counting. Budgeting of your finances will help you understand how much finances you require to make so that to pay your monthly payments. You will receive all details and will be able to find out the possible way of managing your money correctly.

If you admit that your wastes are bigger than your income, it is better to look through the things you buy every month and decide maybe you waste more money than it is required or maybe you purchase those things that are not so important. If you try to save some finances, this will help you enlarge your business income and be ready to any difficulties that may happen in business. Do not forget that any businessman who desires to learn how to manage finances correctly also wishes to learn how to spend cash just on requirements, but not on desires. Very frequently individuals waste much money on things they desire, but not they need. If you follow your savings you will admit more cash in your business budget. So, budgeting is not the unique thing you can do to manage your money. There are also many other ways. Your task is to remember that business will not run smoothly if you do not have cash. You should invest and do it wisely in order to receive the interesting returns. When you earn your cash and try to save or spend your money with more care, be assured in that you will earn more and will learn the appropriate way of managing your finances.