Power View connectivity for Multidimensional Models released

On November 29, 2012 we released the “Power View for Multidimensional Models -- Preview.” We are excited to announce SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 Cumulative Update 4, released today, provides the ability for customers to create Power View reports against their existing multidimensional models (a.k.a. cubes). SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 Cumulative Update 4 contains a few additional enhancements to the “Power View for Multidimensional Models -- Preview” based on customer feedback. This functionality helps customers maximize their existing BI investments by enabling their use with the latest BI end-user tools and adds greater modeling flexibility to the BI Semantic Model. Customers need to upgrade their Analysis Services instance and the Reporting Services add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Server (2010 or 2013) with this Cumulative Update to create Power View reports against their existing cubes.

Microsoft introduced an interactive data exploration, visualization and presentation experience called Power View with SQL Server 2012. Power View reports are presentation-ready at all times because they are always connected to your data. Users can quickly create a variety of visualizations, from tables and matrices to bubble charts and sets of small multiple charts. Power View operates on a BI Semantic Model that resides in Analysis Services databases or PowerPivot workbooks.

 

 

 

With the SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU 4, Power View can consume data from multidimensional models. Now Power View users can connect to both the tabular and multidimensional formats of the BI Semantic Model. This is achieved through native support for Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) in Analysis Services multidimensional models, ensuring optimal performance and functionality. SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU4 contains a few additional enhancements to the “Power View for Multidimensional Models – Preview” released in November 2012. Stay tuned for a deeper dive on the functionality in a future post!

 Frequently Asked Questions

 

1. Do I need to upgrade SSAS & SSRS in SharePoint mode?

    Answer:Yes, you need to upgrade your SSAS & SSRS installed in SharePoint mode.

2. Can I upgrade from existing SQL Server 2012 installation?

    Answer: Yes, you can upgrade from an existing SQL Server 2012 installation.

3. In which editions is Power View support for multidimensional mode enabled?

    Answer: Enterprise and Business Intelligence editions.

4. Can I send DAX queries to multidimensional models?

    Answer: Yes, you can send DAX queries to multi-dimensional models.

5. Will Power View in Excel (on-prem or in the cloud) be able to connect to multi-dimensional models (cubes)?

    Answer: No, this update is only supported on stand alone SharePoint (2010 and 2013) mode.

6. When will Power View in Excel to connect to Multidimensional models?

    Answer:Enabling this scenario is a top priority for the team but we do not have any updates on the roadmap or timeframe to share at this time.

 

SQLBI Team

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2013
    This is great, however, installed the updates and still cannot access MDMs using SharePoint 2013.  All instances, including those used for SharePoint 2013 and its features, updated with CU4.  PowerView in SP2013 reports:   There were errors found while validating the page:  The database is not using in memory storage engine when creating BISM connection for use with PowerView.  Are we missing something for SP2013?

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2013
    Fantastic! I've been looking forward to this feature for a while. I no longer need to develop a tabular equivalent of a multidimensional cube in order for PowerView in SharePoint to work!

  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2013
    Great news! This will appease many MSBI customers with existing solutions. It also significantly helps in the MD vs. Tabular debates!

  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2013
    Is Power View in SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition supported along with SharePoint 2013?

  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2013
    Environment:  SP2013 - SQL2012 SP1Installation takes approximately 30 minutes.Confirmed Instances requiring update:• SSAS Instance(s)• SSRS installed in SharePoint mode• Updating SSAS instance alone is insufficient since Power View is part of Reporting ServicesIn PowerView:Databases with multiples cubes will not open,Named Sets do not appear in Field List, MDX calculated measures work error free (including highly complex scoped statements) Hierarchies cannot be dragged to report l- work around is to expand hierarchy and drag each attribute in the hierarchy to the report Cannot select a PERSPECTIVE SharePoint 2013 data connectionsCannot be created through web - work around is to open library in Windows Explorer, copy and paste an existing file, then edit the file.a. Recommended that we script the BISM data connections for the MDMs as we did for Excel• Report Builder shows SQL Server Report Builder 11.0.3368.0• Power View shows SQL Server Reporting Services 11.0.3000.0 when creating a Power View report using a data connection• Power View shows SQL Server Reporting Services 11.0.3368.0 when editing a Power View report from the Library

  • Anonymous
    June 02, 2013
    "contains a few additional enhancements to the “Power View for Multidimensional Models -- Preview” based on customer feedback".What enchancements please? can't these anywhere.Thanks

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2013
    oh...I got this error now when I try to open a powerview report!!!"Sorry, the versions of the Reporting Services SharePoint Add-In and the Reporting Services service application are incompatible or don’t support this functionality. Please check with your server administrator"but SSRS is installed on the same DEV computer where sharepoint 2010 is and I just deploy the CU4 on it...what can I do???

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2013
    Documentation for Power View connectivity to Multidimensional models is now available at msdn.microsoft.com/.../dn198310.aspx. This documentation should help answer most of the comments/questions below.  Enclosed below is aggregated response to the comments below.  We recommend using RSDS files for connecting to your multidimensional models.If you have more than one cube in your multidimensional database, please specify Cube=<cubename> in your connection string in RSDS file. you can connect to a specific perspective by specifying the perspective name via Cube=<perspectivename> You can select multiple levels in a hierarchy based on your need by selecting the checkbox next to the level.   Power View in SharePoint 2010 is supported. Please refer to the diagram in the documentation. The key enhancements since the public CTP are - supporting dynamic format string, language cell property and behavior when default members are set for an attribute. Please look forward for a blog post on detailed drill down in the coming weeks.RegardsSiva

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2013
    Siva, TK, and all of the Plato team.... FRIGGIN´ WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This is the MSBI we all want to see to beat competition.AlejandroL

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2013
    This is great. Does Power View support passing of parameters yet with SharePoint web parts?  

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2013
    Love the direction this is going. Would love even more to have a better road map. I've got a SQL 2012 DB, AS (Cubes) & RS stack with SPS 2013 as the front end and it's a good start but needs serious improvements in data vizualisation. Powerview is a plus!PS - I would really just like to see Dundas made native in SSRS.Thx!Chris

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2013
    Ye very well done!Also, please add support for things like exporting powerview report to excel etc, renaming matrix / table report columns, cube drillthroughs and usage with performance point (passing parameters etc), last but no the least enabling it in excel so we can query the cube :)

  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2013
    Hi,I am a VM with SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition and SP 2010so i thought installing the hotfix will do the job, however when installing the setup, it didn't detect any update required for my instances!Any idea? am I missing something

  • Anonymous
    June 26, 2013
    I have 10 laks of data in my DataWareHouse....Now I am using Power Pivot in MSExcel 2010 and importing the data in power pivot window through Analysis services..But Somehow..I thought that it is not right to import a huge amount of data into Excel and then do slicing and dicing..What's the advantage of power pivoting?its only for importing data from various sources and do the Intelligent analysis.. What should i do now ? Should I use Power Pivoting Or directly use pivoting by dragging SSAS cubes and dimensions..Power Pivoting is only applicable for Offline analysis...How can I use Power Pivoting By Using cubes and dimensions directly by Analysis Service..

  • Anonymous
    June 27, 2013
    I so exited, but cannot determine which of the CU4 files I should install?There are a bunch of them...support.microsoft.com/.../KBHotfix.aspxPlease help!

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2013
    Joel,This is the one worked for meSQLServer2012_SP1_CU4_2833645_11_0_3368_x64atsupport.microsoft.com/.../KBHotfix.aspx

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2013
    "Internal error: An unexpected exception occurred." usually means a bug in the product. Please file a bug report via Microsoft Connect. Please include the dump file (.dmp, .mdmp) that was generated at the time of this error.

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2013
    I was able to get the CU4 update running and have a great management deck built off of our delivery cube.  However, when we made changes to the cube (re-wrote one of the dimensions) the updates did not roll through the existing deck.Removing and adding fields did not resolve the issue.  The only solution was to build new slides/views to replace the old ones.  While it was annoying for my team this would be a severe problem in a full production environment with dozens of powerview reports and possibly hundreds of users.Loving the product, but I need a way for the views to refresh their data model information much like the data refresh all works in Excel.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2013
    Hi,I'm trying to do visualisations using Excel 2013 and PowerMaps but find that this combo cannot handle dates pre-1900. Does SQL Server and/or PowerView overcome this limitation?

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2014
    Hi,Can I color cells of PowerView objects, like table cells, etc using custom colors?For eg. to indicate GreenYellowRed for few fields, I just want to color those fields.Thanks

  • Anonymous
    July 03, 2014
    I think this service Pack does not enable to connect multidimensional models, I experience it several times and still get problems to connect multidimensional data from Power View in Excel 2013

  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2014
    It's been a year and a half--what is the status of the top priority, as stated in your post, to make SSAS connectivity to Power View in Excel?

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2015
    Does SQL 2014 SSAS support Powerview already ?

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2015
    Enabling PowerView in Excel to connect ot Multi-dimensional models would be amazing. This would really give end users a great looking, easy to use visualization front end for our cubes without forcing us down a long SharePoint rollout/update/development cycle.

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2015
    When the SSAS multidimensional cubes Named Sets will be available in Field List in Power View? Currently Named Sets do not appear in Field List. It would be great to see this functionality available.