Warning: Some whining ahead…
Whew, so these past few weeks have been crazy! For one, I was selected to speak for 24 Hours of PASS! I will be doing a session on MDX queries in SSRS, namely pointing out some useful tips and tricks I’ve learned with MDX in order to get my reports to do what I want ;). Unfortunately for me, this is not a session I’ve done before, so I have to generate content from scratch, and I get the worst cases of PowerPoint block….
I also was recently cast in a play called Matt & Ben, about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who happen to be played by two girls. I play Ben Affleck :). This has been a lot of fun, but it’s a very short rehearsal schedule (we open on Friday) so I’ve been at the theater every night. The show is over March 7th, so I thought, oh I’ll have plenty of time after that to work on my presentation! Except that the slides are due February 23rd, which is Wednesday. Eep.
Even this wouldn’t have been SO bad if it wasn’t also for the fact that I recently signed on to a new full time project doing some report and cube development. This is good because it means I make money. This is bad because when do I find the time to do my presentation?! I’m a perfectionist and I’m starting to get a weeeeeeeeeee bit concerned. I’m also really tired.
So I’m sitting here now, getting together an outline and resources and figuring out, what the heck do I want to SAY to you all? I plan on keeping the actual slide portion short (although I’m terrified it will be too short) and doing a lot of demos. After all, I want to show you clever queries, not yap at you about them. I have a few demos planned, but here’s where I ask you all for help.
You voted for my session, so that means you want to see something that will hopefully help you out. I’m going to have a section at the end of my presentation where I show you some miscellaneous queries that solved an assortment of problems I’ve come across. They will use the tricks I show you earlier in the presentation, but also walk you through my thought process when I’m thrown an SSRS curve ball. I want YOU to throw some of YOUR SSRS curve balls at me. What scenarios have you run into with queries for an SSRS report where you just couldn’t figure out how to get the query to do what you want? Strange groupings? Sorting issues? What causes you to beat your head against the wall? I’ll take ’em on!
3 Comments
My hour-long presentation consists of a whopping six slides. Six. I still manage to talk for an hour! I’m a complete newb to MDX, so anything and everything will be learning for me.
Erika, here’s are scenarios I am currently facing. SQL Server 2008 R2 with shared components against cubes. Each report has 4 parameters.
Use case #1: Allow user to select “week ending” Have report display previous N weeks based on single parameter selection. (in my case it’s 7 weeks)
Use case #2: Create an MDX parameter query that shows current week through 2 years prior to current week, in descending order (so most recent dates are at top)
Use case #3: Create dynamic default to be the current day (or week or month)
I’ve got solutions going for these, so feel free to ping if you want (although I know this would be super easy for you)
Just happened to be doing stuff related to your 24HOP topic and thought you might like some real-world examples to sink your teeth into.
Probably a good idea to cover SSAS sorting versus SSRS sorting and the age-old problem with Month Names or Day Names. That’s a gotcha that many people hit and give up on.
Isn’t juggling work and an actual life fun?
Tom
Thanks for the responses! Panic is starting to abate…