PerformancePoint 2007 - Deployment Guide Correction

In the Deployment Guide documentation released for PerformancePoint CTP2 the software requirement section listed SQL Server Standard Edtion SP2 as the requirement for PerformancePoint.  This is true for the Monitoring and Analytics components.  However, for PerformancePoint Planning, SQL Server Enterprise is required for the Analysis Services piece of the Application suite. 

This correction has been made in the CTP3 release of the Deployment Guide.

Troy

 

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PerformancePoint 2007 CTP3 Release

PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP3 was released on June 22, 2007 and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Connect Site .  The new CTP3 release has many new enhancements for the PerformancePoint Monitorng and Analytics components.  Some of the new features include:

• Drill Down and Drill up capabilities for OLAP views
• Time Intelligence Filters (filter selections base on current date)
• Multi-Page dashboards
• Dashboard Designer improvements
• Analytic View Designer allows you to develop OLAP grids and chart view via drag and drop
• Excel Services Support

The CTP3 release is just for Monitoring and Analytics.  There is no CTP3 release for PerformancePoint Planning.  For Planning there are hotfixes which can be applied to an existing CTP2 environment.  You have to e-mail Microsoft to get the hotfixes and the details on how to install them.

Troy

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Deleting a Custom Member Property

 

Member properties can be added to a Dimension by using the Business Modeler.  Member properties allow you to add custom attributes to a dimension which can be used to create filters for PerforamancePoint Forms and Reports,  provide a meaningful description for a dimension member ,logic in a business rule and more.  However, in the current version of PerformancePoint (CTP2), once a member property is created it cannot be deleted.   This lack of functionality is not a bug.  It is documented in the PerformancePoint Planning Business Modeler Help file under the content heading "Predefined dimensions" for some of the dimensions.  Specifically if you look at the Currency Dimension there is a table that tells you what types of user defined objects can be created, updated or deleted for that dimension.  Unfortunately this is only mentioned in a few places but the ability to delete a user defined member property is not possible for all dimensions.

Of course once I found out that you could not delete a member property I submitted a feedback item to the Microsoft Connect site as a suggestion.  Furthermore I asked them if it was possible to do anything in the "back end" of the application to delete the property.   The response to changing the back end, like deleting the member property from the Analysis Service cube, is that it would potentially cause errors in the PerformancePoint Application.  There would be "sync" issues between the Analysis Service Cube and the PerformancePoint meta data layer.  However, the good news is that Microsoft has accepted this as a valid suggestion so the functionality could change in future releases of the product.  It is also important to remember that this lack of functionality doesn't really impact a PerformancePoint Planning Application.  If you spend a little more time on design you can eliminate having a lot of unused member properties in the Application.

Troy

 

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Naming Objects in PerformancePoint Planning

 

When you create an object in PerformancePoint Planning like a new Dimension, Model or Business Rule you must assign the object a Label and a Name.  Besides choosing what type of naming conventions you want to use for each object in PerformancePoint it is important to consider the constraints for Labels and Names.  First of all in most cases an object name has no reserved word or character restrictions and is should be designed to provide a user-friendly name for the object.  However object names can be up to 256 characters in length with the following exceptions:

• Member property names can be up to a 100 characters
• Calendar Names and Calendar view names can be up to 40 characters, must be unique and cannot use restricted characters or reserved words

Labels on the other hands have a lot more rules and cannot exceed 40 characters.  The Business Modeler also defaults the Label to the object name.  This is fine if the object name does not violate any Label naming constraints for the object you are creating.   Label restrictions exist for the following objects:

• Applications
• Model Sites
• Models
• Model Properties
• Rules
• Rule Sets
• Rule Parameters
• Dimensions
• Member Sets
• Member Views
• Associations

However, the following objects have no restrictions when assigning a Label (other than the 40 character limit):

• Member names
• Users
• Roles
• Cycles
• Assignments
• Jobs
• Job templates

 

For a list of restricted characters and reserved words do a search on "label rules" in the PerformancePoint Business Modeler help file and select "About name and labels" from the search result.

 

Troy

 

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