Simple Pie Chart for Analysis Services Data

This article focuses upon Pie charts, and
extends the examination of Reporting Services charts for Analysis
Services data sources that we began in an earlier article of my MSSQL Server
Reporting Services series, Introducing
Reporting Services Charts for Analysis Services. In that
article we summarized the many different chart (or chart
data region) types that are available, and looked ahead to
individual articles surrounding each type, where we would specify details – and
real world innovations – involving the use of each in reporting Analysis
Services data. We noted that the focus of these related articles,
interspersed among other topics within my MSSQL Server Reporting Services series over
time, would be the design and creation of Analysis
Services chart reports of various types, and the
exploitation of the rich and flexible features contained in Reporting
Services that enable us to make report data more meaningful,
and easier to understand, from the perspective of our information consumer
audiences.

In
many cases, which I try to outline in my articles at appropriate junctures, the
functionality of well-established, but expensive, solutions, such as Cognos (PowerPlay,
Impromptu, and other applications), Business Objects, and myriad
other reporting / OLAP applications can be met in most respects by Reporting
Services – at a tiny fraction of the total cost of ownership. And the
flexibility and richness of the chart data regions alone in Reporting
Services exceed, in many ways, the rather fixed options available in other
enterprise reporting solutions.

As I
have repeated in many of my articles in this column, one of the first things
that become clear to “early adopters” of Reporting Services is that the
“knowledgebase” for Analysis Services reporting with this tool is, to
say the least, sparse. The vacuum of documentation in this arena, even
taking into consideration the release of several books surrounding Reporting
Services in recent years, continues to represent a serious “undersell” of Reporting
Services, from an Analysis Services reporting perspective. I hope
to contribute to making this space more accessible for everyone, and to share
my implementation and conversion experiences as the series evolves. In the
meantime, we can rest assured that the Analysis Services potential in Reporting
Services will contribute significantly to the inevitable commoditization of
business intelligence, via the integrated Microsoft BI solution.

Overview

As we observed in Introducing Reporting Services Charts
for Analysis Services, Reporting
Services enables us to present both summarized and detailed data in colorful,
easy-to-read charts of various designs, from which we
can chose the layout and type that best meets any given business requirement.
Among the types offered, the simple Pie chart type
is certainly among the most popular. In this article, we will introduce the simple
Pie chart type and get some hands-on
exposure to its creation and its general characteristics. This will serve as a
basis for other, more in-depth, practical exercises in coming articles, where
we will extend the value of our chart-enhanced reports in
myriad ways. Among these ways, just for starters, are the capability to format
chart and other objects within a host of
options, to drill down to see the details behind the
graphical / numerical summaries, to combine
chart reports with other types of reports,
and to access many other options in the powerful Reporting
Services tool set.

My objective within this article is to assist the reader in
quickly assembling a report containing a working simple Pie chart
(relying upon, for instance, already assembled datasets and other
underlying support within an existing sample report), and to move efficiently
into targeted reporting nuances that meet real world needs. While this initial
introduction will focus more on the creation of a simple Pie chart, the
report we create will serve as a basis, in prospective articles, to demonstrate
more detailed intricacies that I have found useful in meeting business
requirements of my own clients and readers. The ultimate objective, as is
typically the case within my various series, is to provide hands-on
opportunities to learn overall, start-to-finish procedures, before homing in on
specific options of interest (although we will certainly deal with many of
these options in even our early exercises, as a part of completing the stated
objectives of these sessions).

Introducing Pie Charts for Analysis Services

In
Introducing
Reporting Services Charts for Analysis Services, we learned that the Pie chart type is available in
the following variants:

• Simple Pie
• Exploded Pie

In
this article, we will focus upon the Simple Pie variant, although we
will take up the other variants within relevant contexts in sister articles of
the MSSQL
Server Reporting Services series.

We noted in our introductory article that Pie
charts are typically used to present percentages (as in “percent
composition of a whole,” etc.). In generally describing the type, we observed
that the Pie chart presents value data as percentages
of the whole. Categories are represented by individual
slices. The size of the slice is determined by the value.

In this article, we will introduce
the simple Pie chart data region in detail, and gain practical exposure to
the creation of a basic example of such a chart that is employed in reporting
from an Analysis
Services
data source. In introducing the basic simple Pie chart,
we will:

• Perform a
  brief overview of the Pie chart type, discussing its variants and
  typical uses;
• Open the
  sample Report Server project, AdventureWorks Sample Reports, and ascertain
  connectivity of its shared Analysis Services data source;
• Create a clone
  of an existing sample Analysis Services report, containing a matrix data
  region, with which to launch our overview;
• Examine the simple
  Pie chart type from the standpoint of the existing report, noting
  how we add it to an open report (and thus save time in leveraging existing datasets
  and other support structures) in the Layout tab;
• Modify the
  existing primary dataset within the sample report clone, adding filters
  to limit the size of the data presentation;
• Make
  modifications to the report layout to support the stated client
  reporting needs and practice session objectives;
• Create a
  complete, working sample of a simple Pie chart data region, within the
  existing report, which will allow us to verify its accuracy and completeness once
  we have the chart in place;
• Examine all
  relevant property settings within each of the General, Data,
  X Axis, Y Axis, Legend, 3D Effect and Filters
  tabs;
• Discuss the
  results obtained with the development techniques that we exploit throughout our practice session.

Objective and Business Scenario

In this article, we will
perform a relatively straightforward examination of the simple Pie chart type, from within
a copy of an existing sample Reporting Services 2005 report that we will
create for this purpose. Our focus will be to create a working simple Pie chart, using an Analysis Services data source (the Adventure Works DW sample
OLAP database / Adventure Works cube that accompanies the installation
of Reporting Services), while discussing various characteristics of this chart type as we
progress.

We will examine relevant chart properties, and get some initial
hands-on exposure to the manipulation of those properties to support the delivery
of information to meet the needs of a hypothetical group of
organizational information consumers. Other articles within the MSSQL Server Reporting
Services
series will advance beyond the practice session that we undertake here, using
the simple Pie
chart
we create as a basis from which we can concentrate on in-depth procedures and
nuances that we can use to achieve precision in meeting specific requirements,
and delivering data presentation effects, that we might encounter within the
environments of our respective employers and / or clients.

The Business Need

For purposes of our
practice procedure, we will assume that a group of report developers and
analysts, composed of members of the Sales, Marketing, Information
Technology, and other departments of the Adventure Works
organization, have expressed the need to present some of the information displayed
in the existing Sales
Reason Comparisons OLAP
report through a new
Pie chart report. The group has stated that they want to leverage this
“conversion” process to learn more about the construction and characteristics
of simple Pie chart reports in general. Moreover, they assure us that
they will extrapolate the techniques they learn to scenarios where they will
design, create and deploy reports of this type in the future.

Once
we understand the business need, we propose using a copy of the existing Sales Reason Comparisons report (which, among other samples,
accompanies the installation of Reporting Services). Our tandem
objectives here, we explain, are 1) to streamline our procedures (by using existing connections, datasets,
and other structures that are already in place within the pre-existing report),
and 2) to provide a ready means of verifying at least some of the accuracy and
completeness of the new report (a feature that might be useful in initial
report testing). We mention, as an aside, that we can always delete the
existing matrix data region prior to deploying the final report.

Once
we obtain agreement on this approach, we begin the process of creating the simple Pie chart report
to satisfy the information consumers.