Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Concepts

KPI - Key Performance Indicator is used as a measure of performance (success/failure) of a particular activity. Sometime it is very useful to define a new strategy for the organization. Let's talk about KPI in SSRS 2008 R2 , they have introduced new item in toolbox called 'Indicator' . So we directly drag and drop that indicator to define KPIs in 2008 R2. There are many choices available for KPI presentation like Directional, Symbols, Shapes, Ratings in SSRS 2008 R2.  But in SSRS 2005, 2008 version , There are two ways to define KPIs in the reports 1) by adding images and image value expression and 2) by adding a new column with background color expression. 1) Ex. you want to define KPIs for sales amount > 200 'Green', <= 200 and >= 100 'Yellow', <100 'Red' Simply add a new column and go to the background color property -->add expression there Method1: (Using IIF statement) =iif(fields!salesamt.va...

We use more than one dataset in many of the reports and we always think to join or merge datasets to provide a good solution in reports but we were not able to do it in 2005 or 2008, but now the time has come and microsoft has finally included some cool functions (Lookup, LookupSet, MultiLookup) in SSRS 2008 R2 Let's see how "LOOKUP" works here, Suppose we have a two datasets in the report, ex. one dataset (Store) has store information (StoreID, StoreName, Location, $ Sales etc, Date) and second dataset (Sales) has sales information. (StoreID, Date, Target $ Sales etc.) I will directly grab a columns from first dataset but I also want to display target sales amount as a new column with this information. Now you can use Lookup function here in a new column =LOOKUP(Fields!StoreID.Value,Fields!StoreID.Value,Fields!TargetSales.Value,"Sales") In Lookup function, you need to pass following things:   Value form the first dataset to join with second dataset ...

When you try to set up Tablix property for keep header visible while scrolling, you will see that it is not working in SSRS 2008 or SSRS 2008 R2. You need to take some extra steps to set up this property 1)       Uncheck keep header visible while scrolling tab under tablix property                            2)       Go to Grouping and Click on the right side arrow (Advanced Mode) 3)       Select the first Static Property in Row Groups (In your report first row should display column headers) 4)       Make Fixed Data = True                  5)       Run the report and you will get column headers visible while scrolling Hope it helps! Thanks

We can use sql queries or some of the cool expressions available in SSRS to set default date parameters: Set First Day of previous week (Monday) =DateAdd(DateInterval.Day, -6,DateAdd(DateInterval.Day, 1-Weekday(today),Today)) Set Last Day of previous week (Sunday) =DateAdd(DateInterval.Day, -0,DateAdd(DateInterval.Day, 1-Weekday(today),Today)) Set First Day of Current Week (Monday) =DateAdd("d", 1 - DatePart(DateInterval.WeekDay, Today(),FirstDayOfWeek.Monday), Today()) Set Last Day of Current Week (Sunday) =DateAdd("d" ,7- DatePart(DateInterval.WeekDay,Today(),FirstDayOfWeek.Monday),Today()) Set First Date of last month =DateAdd("m", -1, DateSerial(Year(Now()), Month(Now()), 1)) Set Last date of last month =DateAdd("d", -1, DateSerial(Year(Now()), Month(Now()), 1)) Set First date of current month =DateSerial(Year(Now()), Month(Now()), 1) Set Last date of current month =DateAdd("d",-1,(DateAdd("m", 1,...