SharePoint (and Project Server) Shenanigans

I know TechEd Europe 2012 is over now and unfortunately it is only now that I have had a chance to recount my adventures of day two.

Day two for me was unfortunately my last day due to work commitments.  It was however the day of my presentation on Integrating SharePoint and Project Server 2010.

First of all, the sessions:

Keynote

The focus of the keynote on day two was around Windows 8.  Now I know that Windows 8 has been available in its preview form for a long time now and we have seen it on tablets with the Samsung Series 7 Slate:

However, I have installed it in a VM and tried it out and felt the desktop experience was somewhat lacking.  This is only based on initial trials and I hadn’t done any research into shortcuts etc.  So it was just my initial impression.

I have to say though, after watching the keynote, I was pleasantly surprised.  The ease of use for touch and mouse / keyboard interfaces is actually very good but is somewhat hidden from initial impressions and I can totally see that I will be using Windows 8 with ease in future.

As part of the keynote, they demonstrated Tablet use, Mouse / Keyboard use and even multi-touch aware touch pads on laptops.  It is clear that a lot of thought has been put into this interface and more importantly every demonstration in this keynote was live, using the release preview of the software.

Then they demonstrated Windows To Go, which is a new feature of Windows 8 allowing you to run the OS and anything installed from a USB drive.

Once again a live demo which worked first time without issues and then whilst running the OS and demonstrating the solution he pulled the USB stick out:

And within 60 seconds, if you put the USB stick back in, the OS and the applications just keep running, totally amazing!!!

Can you imagine using your new Microsoft Surface tablet with all your sales demos and POC machines booting from the USB (perhaps a bit aspirational, but still… it sounds possible)

Anyway… on to the sessions…  I only really had time for one session:

BI Semantic Models: Multi-dimensional vs. Tabular

Now I am have been using the BI tool part of the SharePoint for a very long time and recently my projects has started to become more involved in the backend infrastructure of the data and the way it is stored and accessed.

This is particularly useful when you consider the newer BI technologies such as PerformancePoint (not that new I know), PowerPivot (a bit newer) and PowerView (cutting edge) which rely upon either Analysis Service cubes and PowerPivot cubes.

The tabular approach is new by comparison and uses DACS rather than MDX to query and process the data.

The session discussed the differences and which is more performed better under different scenarios.

The presenters were excellent and clearly knew this stuff inside out!

The session can be viewed here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DBI319

After the session, I caught up on emails and work and then straight into my session:

Integrating SharePoint and Project Server 2010

Essentially a slightly cut down version of my original presentation at the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 (which is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/showcase/details.aspx?uuid=06fff348-8836-497b-a5eb-b5ed63a3b6c9)

The presentation went well and I even had my groupies in the form of Robin Kruithof (CXS – who has just started his blog here) and Barbara Henhapl (Project MVP – Austria).

I was also honoured to have Christophe Fiessinger in the audience too.

And that was it for me, I said my goodbyes to all the colleagues and people I networked with and headed back to the airport for the flight home (and work the next day…)