I recently attended a Pragmatic Works webinar entitled ‘What’s New in BI Denali’ presented by Brian Knight.  The full webinar is found here.  My notes from the webinar are included below:

SSIS

• Ability to draw box around data flow tasks and group them.  Grouping can be collapsed and expanded.
• ‘Undo’ functionality
• Connections can be shared amongst packages (Connection Manager).
• Config files have been replaced by parameters (although config files will still exist).  Parameters can be passed into the package to make it operational.
• Projects are now applications, not just containers.
• DTS is now dead, no more legacy mode.
• No longer deploy projects to MSDB database, now deployed to SSIS folder in SSMS. Create a catalog to store packages.  Catalog is a database (SSISDB).
• Can configure project or package from within SSMS.
• Ability to create different environments (e.g. Dev, QA, Prod) with different parameters and select the environment you want to run the package in.
• Everything is scriptable with TSQL (running packages, etc.)
• Packages run on the server instead of local client.
• Ability to version packages.

SSAS

• Goal – to make SSAS easier to use (shorter learning curve).
• Tabular data model protocol, skip the Data Warehouse.  For small/medium environments.  Instead of creating data sources, data source views.  Can
  start with data instead of model.  Import from data source, select tables and filter data.  Data is imported into the database.  SSAS can be UDM or tabular data model – decide during installation.
• MDX learning curve is steep, now easy to create calculated columns via GUI.  Can set properties for columns in dataset via GUI.
• Creating KPI – now easy to create via user interface similar to PowerPivot.
• Uses DAX language – derivative of MDX, similar to Excel language.
• Can create relationships between tables and hierarchies in GUI.
• Can look at data before deploying and processing cube.
• Data quality services – can define rules for data formatting.

Project Crescent

• Goes on top of tabular data model.  Deploy cube, cube becomes source for crescent.  Replaces report models.
• Report creation tool, requires SharePoint.
• Silverlight based.
• Charts are linked, can click on an element in one chart and another chart will update automatically.
• Can click play button to automatically update the graph based on x-axis value (e.g. time)
• Cannot export report to Excel or PDF in this release.  Imports to a PowerPoint doc.  Can click play button in PowerPoint to play report.

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