SQL server 2008 - Charting problems - sql-server

I'm trying to create a chart from the below table and ideally would like a line chart with weeks across the bottom, one static sales target line ( Average would work ) and then 4 curve lines for the people. Note: The country and year do not need to be displayed.
Easy to do with a pivot chart in excel, but I am really confused on this one and very new to SQL. Any advise/help would be appreciated.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/PjuSt.jpg

SQL itself cannot make charts, it can only provide data which other tools can use to make charts from. Using Excel is one solution; other depend on what DBMS you are using and what tools you have available. For example, if you are using SQL Server, then SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) makes this easy (once you've set it up).
But with just SQL - no, no charts.

Related

How to access the data base behind IBM Cognos Report Studio

We are using the IBM Cognos Report Studio for Making the Reports.
And we have 1000s of reports developed and using.
Now i need to fetch all the SQL queries written in these 1000+ reports.
For that at present i am opening the report studio for each individual report and getting the query.
But it is very tedious job and taking months to get all the SQLs in these 1000+ reports.
So i am looking for a way to get all these queries from database behind Cognos studio.
Does these report parameters (including the SQL) store in a Database or only in Contentstore?
If it store in DB then is it possible to access the Report Studio in a Database tool like Oracle SQL Developer?
So that i can fetch all the SQLs in one shot from the database table.
Thanks for the help!
My experience migrating from one reporting product to another is like what you are asking. I think I had 7000 reports that I was aware of plus many reports sitting on workstation hard drives. At some point along the way we realized that the new product had different features than the old one, so report redesign was a good option in most cases. It took 18 months once we actually started working on the reports. That was to replace the 700 "standard" reports. Users were on their own (with support from IT and subject matter experts) for their custom work. I now have about 19,000 reports in Cognos.
Except where the report developer wrote SQL in a SQL object in the Queries area, Cognos reports do not contain SQL code. Cognos generates the SQL at runtime based on the report spec and user interaction (what parameters they set, what page the opened, etc.). Short of writing your own report spec parser, duplicating the work that Cognos does for you, there is no way I know of to generate the SQL.
One possibility: I haven't dug too deeply into the Cognos SDK. There may be a method there to generate the SQL for each report. Then you can do it automatically. Be aware that for thousands of reports you'll want to run this process during non-work hours. It could run for hours and may use a lot of resources.
Another possibility: Turn on native query logging (Cognos Administration | System | All dispatchers | | Set properties | Settings | Logging | Check the boxes for "Audit the native query..."). Then have a person, a product like those from Motio, or a Cognos SDK program you create yourself run every report. Then you can get the SQL from the Audit database. Of course, the problem here is answering prompts. It will probably take a person to run these.
To add two columns to a list, or two data elements to a report or page header or footer, or two filters (I don't know what you mean by "clause"), you'll want to use the Cognos SDK.
Choose relevant examples of different types of reports.
Examine the XML report spec for each of those reports.
Determine how to identify where the new element should appear in the XML.
Write a program (probably in C# or Java) to use the SDK to...
inspect every report in your environment.
determine which pattern the report fits.
add the data elements.
save the report.

Quick way to update an excel spreadsheet and upload changes made to excel into SQL Server 2014?

We have a department that has been working in an excel spreadsheet to track a major part of our business. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone, but the Excel Spreadsheet is a hot mess right now. As we are working on implementing a long term solution for this data, I need a short term solution and I am hoping you might have some recommendations. For the next two months, we need to identify problem areas in the spreadsheet (duplicate rows, missing data, etc) and as those problems are addressed in the excel spreadsheet, update the SQL server with those changes.
My thought is to schedule an SSIS to bring in the spreadsheet with changes nightly then run a stored proc to identify the problems, then run an SSRS to spit out a new excel spreadsheet for them to work on the next day.
Is there a better way to do this that isn't going to take a ton of time/resources to get up and running? I thought about Power Pivot and that would get the data out to them, but how would I upload the changes they make?
Anyway, is there a better quick solution to tide us over till we have our perm solution in place? We are using a 2014 SQL Server and Microsoft Office 2016.
Thank you!
My recommendation is to use .NET with NPOI dlls https://github.com/tonyqus/npoi, grab the data from the spreadsheet, use classes, Generics and LINQ to clean the data and the upload it to SQL Server.

SSIS Report Format Issue

I want to generate a csv report with the following format in SSIS -
Some Static Text - 1
Data from SQL
Some Static Text - 2
Data From SQL
I was thinking to create a report with these static texts in my report and generate the SQL data at runtime. But i can not fix the position of the Some Static text - 2 as the records from SQL can be 'n' in numbers.
I am newbie to SSIS, any help is much appreciated
You need SSRS. You can build reports for it in Visual Studio. SSIS is an ETL tool (Extract, transform, load) which is primarily used to aggregate data, migrate data, consolidate data, etc. SSRS is a tool that allows end-users to consume dynamic reports that you provide.
EDIT:
Install SSRS and configure it so that it's working:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143711.aspx
I assume you already have SSDT since you mentioned SSIS, but just in case you don't:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/hh500335(v=vs.103).aspx
Then you'll open Visual Studio, create a new SSRS project, make a new report, define your datasource(s), and use the toolbox to add tables or whatever other display you need. It can also use parameters if you need user-input. Static content can be placed wherever you need it - and different datasets can be displayed wherever you need them, as well.
I would like to help more, but it sounds like you are starting from scratch and I can't possibly tell you everything there is to know about SSRS in this forum. So, here is an SSRS Tutorial:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms167305.aspx
Good luck - SSRS/SSIS/SSDT are awesome tools so I'm sure you'll find what you need.

Is it possible to use Excel 2010 like sparklines in SSRS

I want to know if it possible to repoduce the idea of Excel 2010 sparklines in a SSRS 2005 Report. I want to show a report that has an indication of the price fluctuations over a 3 month period for a range of products. I could just give the figures over the 3 month period but it is very hard to quickly distinguish what is happening to the various products in a sea of numbers.
See this, which shows it's possible, and this, which although it doesn't mention sparklines explicitly, explains how to embed a chart per-row in a table.
You could try to embed a chart object per line. That's it.
Or programmatically get an Excel sheet from SSRS and enrich it in code.
I am using a third party Sparkline chart control that was originally written for SSRS 2005 - it's been updated for 2008 but I'm pretty sure it still supports SSRS 2005.
I've done a bit of research into embedding Sparklines into a reporting services report and this was what I choose as my solution. They have a nice fully featured evaluation version which is good for 40 days (I think).
SparkLines for Reporting Services

Simpler interface for SQL Server analysis services cubes for end users

Is there a simpler interface for end users to run "queries" on pre-existing SqlServer Analysis Service cubes? I'm looking for a way to deploy the cubes and allow the users to work with the data through a simpler interface than BIDS. Is this even possible?
I would recommend Excel too. It is an environment that your users are familiar with anyway, and they will be able to perform additional analysis (totals etc) without learning any new interfaces.
However, I would advise against pivot tables as a method of getting the data into Excel. I once worked on a project using pivot tables, and it was a filthy nightmare. The more recent versions of Office have a slightly different tool called "Microsoft Office Excel Add-in for SQL Server Analysis Services" which can get OLAP data into Excel. I downloaded XLAddinSetup.msi for Excel 2002/3 or you can use this method for Excel 2007.
You can use Excel with pivot tables for that, no need to write any queries at all, they can drill down to all the data they need
There's a couple of End User Reporting Tools around.
Our tool - RSinteract, is quite cheap and effective. It uses an AJAXy web interface so no need to install on the client and has drag and drop functionality similar to the other tools. It also has a 30 day evaluation.
There are many, many tools. An incomplete overview can be found here: http://www.ssas-info.com/analysis-services-client-tools-frontend
Dundas has a set of tools that let you drag and drop dimensions/hierarchies/measures to create visualizations like charts and/or grids. The product name is Dundas Chart for ASP.NET Enterprise Edition, and it has a free demo.
ProClarity also had a suite of tools. Not sure how you get those tools any longer, but I think they are part of MSDN now.
As stated by Jay, there are several client tools you can use to query the cubes that give the end user the ability to drag and drop dimensions for ad-hoc querying.
ProClarity has been acquired by Microsoft, and most of the functionality is being incorporated into PerformancePoint
Panorama Software (original developers of Analysis Services) also provide access with their NovaView products
Another option is Report Builder, that comes for free with SQL Server.
Though the SQL Server 2005 version is a bit cranky, the new release with SQL Server 2008 seems to work much better.
Although it isn't as flexible as excel for ad-hoc queries,it comes very handy for some scenarios.

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