StratexBlog

SharePoint 2010 Evaluation Guide and Technical Diagrams

Andrew Smart — Thu, 06 May 2010 08:48:25 +0000

Overview

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Evaluation Guide

This evaluation guide is designed to give the IT professional an introduction and overview of the SharePoint Server 2010 features that are most pertinent to installing, managing, and configuring the SharePoint farm.

Search

Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products (requires Microsoft Visio)

This technical diagram compares the enterprise search capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, Microsoft Search Server 2010 and Microsoft Search Server Express 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and Microsoft FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010.

Search Environment Planning for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

This enterprise search model steps you through design decisions based on where users and content are located and presents four different designs for geographically dispersed deployments.

Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

This model describes the logical and physical components of the crawl architecture and the query architecture for the search system in SharePoint Server 2010. The new components enable more redundancy within the server farm and each of the crawl components and query components can be scaled out separately based on the needs of the organisation.

Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

This model outlines four major steps to achieve a design for search in a SharePoint Server 2010 deployment. Starting with identifying business requirements, corpus volume, and key performance metrics, each successive step helps to refine the starting-point architecture.

Insights

Getting started with business intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010

This article discusses the business intelligence tools available in SharePoint Server 2010.

Composites

Business Connectivity Services Model

Use this model to learn about Business Connectivity Services, including, typical solutions based on Business Connectivity Services, architecture and security

IT Pro

Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010

This model describes common ways to build and scale farm topologies by using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, including planning which servers to start services on.

Services in SharePoint 2010 Products

This model describes and illustrates the services architecture in SharePoint 2010 Products, including and common ways to deploy services in your overall solution design.

Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products

This model illustrates how to deploy services across farms based on SharePoint 2010 Products to provide centralised administration of services.

Hosting Environments for SharePoint 2010 Products

This model summarises the support for hosting environments and illustrates common hosting architectures using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

How is your PPS M&A (Dashboard Designer) experience still relevant?

Mark Woodall — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:21:54 +0000

I had a communication recently with an old partner who had, like me spent a lot of time learning and qualifying for their PPS certification. He wanted to know what relevance the qualification now has in the Microsoft certification process for a Microsoft Partner.

What do we do now that PPS Planning is off the shelves?

Mark Woodall — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:49:23 +0000

Well, it was a bit of a blow. I had proudly done my research, worked for a MCTS qualification in PPS (which I might tell you is 80% Planning modules and 20% Dashboard Designer) and all for what? For Microsoft to pull it off the shelves which basically means there will be no new sales, clients or consultants working on the product. I have read loads of blogs and comments bitterly complaining about the reversal of fortune, but actually, if Microsoft thinks PPS Planning won't make it in the current climate, then there is not much we can do other than vent frustration. Now we need to look for alternatives.

Another Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 demo

Andrew Smart — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:44:42 +0000

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 demo

Andrew Smart — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:41:39 +0000

The Future of BI?

Andrew Smart — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:37:28 +0000

A short story about a PPS implementation

Mark Woodall — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:15:45 +0000

This entry was provoked by a question in a professional forum - so here is my response with some added bits.

Has anybody developed a "serious and working" (not prototype or such) budgeting infrastructure with PPS out there?

Serious eh..? Yes, but I'm not sure whether the client is using it to budget seriously. The question implies a certain skepticism that PPS is really suitable or is in actual live use somewhere in the world (the questionner is from Italy). So here is my story of a serious implementation by way of proof but also as a reminder of the work involved. This is for a relatively straight forward single-company deployment which meant that I was directly involved in every part, so please forgive all the 'I did this, I did that' stuff.

Configuring Staging database permissions

Mark Woodall — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:32:00 +0000

The standard Microsoft doco called 'PerformancePoint Server Operations Guide.doc' has some very useful info, but I found that some examples do not work without tweaks. This is the bit (around pages 39 of 374 !) about granting user permissions and access to the PPS staging database so that the data integration users who make SSIS (Integration services) ETL packages can run imports and stored procedures which work on the staging database.

You will require sql administrator access to your SQLServer instance to perform these tasks, and need to know how to run SQL Server Management Studio. Below is a shot of the default users associated with a new PPS staging database.

Labels and Names in PPS Models

Mark Woodall — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:46:11 +0000

When constructing model components in PBM or adding data you have to consider how to name things. Labels have to be unique (across an entire model) and less than 40 characters (no funny stuff : _*()'@?/"!\-+{}[]) , Names (256 char) and Description (512 char) can be any unicode character. The temptation is to put something programmerish into the Label which imples order and relationship, and put the visible end-user text in the Name or Description fields.

Schema labels - such as the PPS Application, Root site, sub-site (if used), dimension, and model labels are all used in making the Application table names and Analysis database / cube names. So keep it short and unique and avoid nasty characters if you want a hope of finding things in SQLServer. These schema labels also appear in Excel plug dialogues. Examples are shown in an earlier blog here.

Member labels - The problem is that the member Label

Making Current vrs Previous month trend values in PerformancePoint.

Mark Woodall — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:50:13 +0000

A common requirement in a scorecard or chart is to provide a visual presentation of how the current period values compare to the previous period.
The simple calculation would be; value of current period - value of previous period = movement (or variance or trend etc..). If the result is negative then the value has fallen, if positive it has risen and if 0 then it has not changed. So we have 3 states which can be represented by an arrows indicator. - see scorecard image below.

Current vrs Previous month trend scorecard

How can this formula be applied in a Dashboard Designer scorecard?