So I have spatial data stored in an SQL Server 2008 database (zip codes). My frontend is Silverlight 4 and I can get the shapes from the WCF service to the frontend as GML.
Is there any easy way to add them as shapes to the map without parsing the GML myself? Or could I use well known text format instead?
I cannot use an RSS service for various other reasons.
Maybe you can use the spatial functions in odata for this. Its in the wcf data services October preview.
Use WKT. if you need to extract data from geometry types. Add sql types as reference to your project and use sql geometry types.
Related
I want to use Tableau integration with SQL Server for my business reporting (generate Excel and PDF files). However I do not want to use the Tableau dashboard as the user interface for collecting input data. I already built our web applications to do that.
So the requirements are:
Custom web applications (no Tableau Dashboard)
Tableau integration with SQL server
Output Excel/PDF
Is it possible to use a custom web application to replace the Tableau Dashboard for collecting user input?
Can anyone share any documentation?
If what you want is a custom web app with some visualizations implemented by Tableau Server, yet to have those visualizations embedded and controlled by your custom application, then Tableau has a lot of options for you.
See the sections on "Embedding" visualizations in the Tableau help pages. You may also want to use the Javascript API (start with the excellent 5 minute tutorial). That API allows you to control interaction between your application and the embedded visualization to make the integration more seamless, and customized to your needs.
To avoid forcing your users to authenticate with Tableau Server, read about Tableau's solution to Single Sign On and/or read about Trusted Authentication (which lets your application vouch for a user's identity if you have a core based license).
All these features are described in the Desktop, Server or Developer guides on Tableau's help pages. I recommend embedding using the object HTML tag instead of the iframe tag. Both work and both are documented, but the object tag gives you more control, works well with the JavaScript API and avoids some of the legacy HTML issues surrounding iframes.
If instead, as you stated, your only goal is to produce Excel or PDF output, Tableau can do that - one easy way is to append .pdf or .csv to URLs. Again read the documentation on embedding. But if that is the only goal, especially for CSV, Tableau is an expensive way to simply generate a CSV file. I'd give some thought to your requirements. There are reporting packages that are focused on hard copy tabular reports (sometimes called report factories) - that's not Tableau's primary focus.
One approach that can be helpful, use a modest investment in Tableau Desktop to quickly prototype your visualizations and reports. Verify you are producing the right outputs and that you have the right data to create them. Then you can decide whether Tableau is the best way to meet your requirements in a production environment. Even if you use a different approach in production, it can be very helpful for speeding that initial investigation.
If I want to use a google data studio native community connector as my data source, for instance the Google Cloud Storage one, how can I add a report template to this data source? My problem is that I will need to create multiple reports (sharing a common template) based on the same data source.
Somewhat surprisingly, this is possible using custom community connectors but not via the Google native ones.
I didn't fully understand your requirement. I wanted to clear out the terminologies:
Connector: Connectors are generic pipes to any data you might have. Connectors can be native or Community Connectors. e.g. Google Sheets connector.
Data Source: When you provide necessary configuration and authentication to a connector and instantiate it, you create a data source. e.g. When you use the Google Sheets connector to connect to a specific Sheet that you own, a new data source is created with that Sheet's name. A single data source can be used across different reports.
Report: Reports are your dashboards. A report can contain multiple data sources.
Template: Any report that has 'copying' enabled, can be used as a template. Simply copy the report and replace the data sources attached to the original report.
Given this, I'm reiterating your requirements: you have a report that uses a data source based on the Google Cloud Storage native connector. Now you want to create multiple reports from the same report using the same data source.
The solution is to simply copy the report and make edits to the copied reports as needed.
I'm building a webapp where one can develop documents within the web browser (e.g., something like Zoho's document tool, or Google Docs). In my case, I have a set of arrays that store different paragraphs and other pieces of information, along with parallel arrays that store metadata on the paragraphs themselves.
The entire webapp is written in jQuery and associated libraries / plugins.
Is there an elegant way for me to save this as a file on the server itself? So far, I've been recommended using a hidden form to POST the arrays to the server and store them in a NoSQL database of some sort... This feels a bit painful to me and I'm wondering if (1) there is a more elegant approach, or (2) there is a library / framework that automates some of the sending / POSTing / saving.
Thank you!
You would need to create services that live on the server itself. These services would be methods such as (just as a simple example)
SaveDocument(User, Document)
GetDocument(User, Document)
you would need to configure your web app to call these services and pass in the required parameters. Now as for how to do this, you could write the services in any number of languages (Java using JavaEE, C# using WCF to name a few, but you can also do this in python/ruby/etc) and then generate WSDL interfaces to the services that any number of other languages could call.
There are lots of resources available on the web that cover this, so pick a language you want to learn, or are already proficient in and google around on how to develop web services in that language.
Good luck!
My Silverlight 4 application has a DataGrid control which needs to display data rows from SQL server query command (e.g. SELECT * FROM TABLE...). Is there any solution? Do I need use WCF or ADO?
Thanks a lot for any help.
Based on your description of "DataGrid control which needs to display data rows from SQL server query command" you want to use RIA services.
Create a RIA services Silverlight project (or enable RIA services on your existing project)
Create an Entity Framework model referencing your SQL server table
Create a Domain service that uses your EF model
After building the project you will then be able to see your tables in the Data Sources window
From the Data Sources window you can directly drag a grid, representing that table, onto a page. This will create a DomainDataSource as well as the DataGrid and wire it all up for you.
The only bit you will need to add is paging.
Here is some more information about this process: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707376(v=vs.91).aspx
I know it sounds like a lot or work, but once you get used to the steps it is all pretty simple (and makes the draggy-droppy stuff work really well).
Silverlight cannot, at the moment, access databases like Sql Server or Oracle directly.
To access data you have to use some form of service as a gateway to your data.
Pure WCF is an option.
You should also take a look at WCF RIA Services.
This a good link to see what else is available.
http://wildermuth.com/2010/07/08/State_of_Data_Access_in_Silverlight_4
You can also take a look on project Agatha-rrsl.
http://code.google.com/p/agatha-rrsl/
The above are all free.
There are non free alternatives too.
How can I integrate Reports done in Microsoft Access in my WPF application?
You'll have to define a little bit more what you mean by integration.
You are talking about a desktop application like word or PowerPoint or in this case Access. You can certainly automate or use Access as a com object and have access reports output their results as RFT or likey even better as a PDF document. So, it not clear when you speak of integration is really much centered around how you going to prompt the user for those report paramters and ask the user for filtering etc. So, choices you have range from a simple nightly batch job that runs and creates a bunch of PDF files on the users desktop and then are copied to a server, or perhaps even FTP up to the server.
Perhaps you talking about something a little bit tighter here?
So I'm not really sure if your questions any different than how would you integrate some PDF documents, or PowerPoint presentation, or in this case some Access reports. They are all the same concept and your question not really different then asking how to do this with power point.
However keep in mind that for Access 2010, there is WEB based reporting now. Those web reports actually use behind the scene are fully built around SQL server reporting services. In this case, the data will reside on SharePoint, but the WEB report side of Access are WPF presentation compatible reports since they are web based and run using sql server reporting services (they are RDL reports).
On the other hand if you're not really using Access in this case. You might as well just use the web based SQL server reporting service then. So do keep in mind that the web based reports Access uses for access 2010 is/are based on SQL server reporting services and it's actually creating RDL compatible reports.
However if you're not talking about the web based edition of access available in for 2010, then you're back to any old desktop program like excel are word or PDF documents or in this case Access. So, there's nothing different here about any old desktop program in windows and Access is one of those programs (sans the new weeb stuff for 2010).
So, the approach (or shall I say challenge) to getting that data into your presentation layer is not really a specific question to access alone, but is really much like a asking how can you have the output of your PowerPoint presentation brought into WPF.
You likely be best to have the report's render its output as PDF, or perhaps the XPS document writer is a sutiable output. So, your code take it from that point onwards for printing or display. So if you have the means to display a PDF or XPS doc, now then this would be a possible road to go down.