BI Documenter

The time taken to make a documentation snapshot in BI Documenter has been dramatically reduced thanks the use of a new embedded database engine for snapshot storage and retrieval: Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 2005.

Using version BI Documenter 2.0 to make a snapshot of the "AdventureWorks" sample database now averages around 20 seconds, representing a two-fold increase in application performance over the previous version of BI Documenter.

In addition to this massive performance increase, the new database engine included in the BI Documenter 2.0 also delivers significantly increased reliability, including support for “self-healing” and management technologies that are designed to handle “instant off”.

And because SQL Server Compact Edition 2005 supports connectivity via the SQL Compact OLEDB data provider, your metadata is now more accessible than ever.

BI Documenter 2.0 is a free upgrade for all paid users of previous versions of BI Documenter.

The team here at BI Documenter are always very interested in customer statistics, as this information was certainly thin on the ground when we got started with BI Documenter. Now has come time for us to reciprocate in our own small way.

So without further ado we present to you the some aggregated data representing where in the world our customers come from. No I won't give you the scale - needless to say it's not huge as the product has been around only 6 months. However we can say that we are constantly surprised at the variety of locations and different types of businesses that utilize BI Documenter. Eighty percent of our business is direct via our website and this list represents that business.

In descending order:

•  Network (net)
•  Australia (au)
•  Commercial (com)
•  Netherlands (nl)
•  United Kingdom (uk)
•  Germany (de)
•  Italy (it)
•  India (in)
•  Belgium (be)
•  Poland (pl)
•  Canada (ca)
•  Mexico (mx)
•  Denmark (dk)
•  New Zealand (nz)
•  France (fr)
•  Brazil (br)
•  Non-Profit Organizations (org)
•  Switzerland (ch)
•  Norway (no)
•  Sweden (se)
•  Czech Republic (cz)
•  Israel (il)
•  USA Education (edu)
•  Russian Federation (ru)
•  Finland (fi)
•  Argentina (ar)
•  Portugal (pt)
•  USA Government (gov)
•  Slovenia (si)
•  Spain (es)
•  Pakistan (pk)
•  Japan (jp)

Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for 2007 from the whole team at BI Documenter and may all your documentation problems be small ones!

As business intelligence and database architects and designers, we often need to assess and affect a data definition change across an entire database.

An example of this is changing the data type of a column AccountNumber from the generic data type varchar(10) to a user defined SQL data type of AccountNumber across an entire database.

The manual method for this is to attempt to recall from memory every table, view, etc, where the account number value is used, hope you haven't forgotten any, then visit each remembered object and change the definition. BI Documenter makes this task a lot easier with a cross referenced list of columns within a database called the Columns Cross Index.

The Columns Cross Index shows column names cross referenced with a list of tables and views that  contain a column with the same name:

And is also clickable to reveal the data type definitions for each column (and a column that we have forgotten to change!):

Thanks to the team at SDM for suggesting this and the Parameters Cross Index in BI Documenter!

Version 1.6.1.0 (October 9th 2006)

• Add Reporting Services as a documentation target.

• Add a Snapshot Management applet.

• Add hierarchies to the Dimension objects in an SSIS diagram.

• Add Script Tasks to Diagram Editor.

• Fail gracefully on snapshots when the underlying solution objects are no longer available

• Documentation enhancements, including improved home page navigation and icons.

• Add Unicode encoding option for CHM output to enable correct table of contents encoding for extended character sets, including Western European, Baltic, Cyrillic.

• Redesigned menu system for the user interface.

• Fix invalid operation when bad file name is used saving diagram.

• Remove empty menus in documentation output.

• Fix response time for quick cancel of version write.

• Fix for AMO ItemNotFound exception.

• Fix behavior when writing cubes that contain Perspectives (Enterprise Edition SQL Server only).

• Fix version write problem when a Data Flow Component references a connection manager which no longer exists.

• Strengthen integrity checking on Analysis Services version write.

• Add missing Script Task dependency.

• Numerous other performance and user interface improvements.

We released a major version of BI Documenter this month after a coding slog-fest through most of August.

One of the major new features in version 1.5 is Drag and Drop Diagramming.

Our approach to this is that every object in the solution is diagrammable, and not just the ERM style table relationships that you are probably used to.

So while you can do this:

You can also do this: 

By moving beyond traditional ERM diagrams to diagrams that incorporate non-traditional components (such as SSIS ETL components) our hope is that we can help our users further bridge the gap between technical, business and operational users.

Or as Dave Winer put it:

Users and developers partying together.

The diagramming component is fairly autonomous as well, so if you need a quick diagram to pop into a specification document you can do that without having to regenerate a new set of documentation.

Happy diagramming!

When we first planned for the initial release of BI Documenter our primary aim was a very stable architectural foundation on which to build on.

We really nailed this objective with the first version of BI Documenter. We have an excellent performing application with an extremely low defect rate that documents SQL Server and Analysis Services with unerring accuracy - plus it's pretty fast too!

So now the obvious question is - what's next?

The two major things that we are hearing from our partners and customers are:

"We want to extend the documentation beyond the SQL Server database and Analysis Services documentation to include all the components of the Microsoft BI stack!”
This means providing an integrated way to document traditonal SQL databases, Analysis Services databases, Integration Services, Reporting Services and Business Scorecard Manager all under the one umbrella. Integration Services is our first targeted component in this broadening of BI Documenter's scope.

Eventually we would like to offer a solution for the entire Microsoft BI stack.

"Provide a way for us to visualize our data structures!"
A great way for our users to convey the concepts to their own clients and users (internal or external) is by visualizing the underlying entities, whether a traditional ERM diagram of a SQL database or a star or snowflake schema used by a data warehouse - a picture as they say tells a thousand words.

As a result of this type of feedback and encouragement, we are working on expanding the scope of what BI Documenter can document as well as providing visualization features in what will be the first major update to BI Documenter.

We also have another major announcement that will accompany the next major release that I am sure will be extremely welcome news for those who only wish to use BI Documenter for simple database documentation - without all the bells and whistles.

As ever, keep watching this space!