Redmond Diary

By Andrew J. Brust

Blog archive

Gemini Does Cloud!

I'm participating in the Microsoft Gemini CTP (Gemini is the self-service BI component cooperatively provided by the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2, Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010) and the SQL Azure CTP. I found intriguing the question of whether these two CTP technologies could be used together. Turns out they can!

I successfully got Gemini to import data from a SQL Azure Database (after migrating the AdventureWorksDW2008 dimCurrency table into an Azure database called AWCloud)!

I set up the connection like so:


[Click on image for larger view.]

Note the username@servername syntax in the User Name field). The other tricks to keep in mind are that (a) You must type the database name in manually, as Gemini will not be able to pull down a list of databases from the server and (b) likewise, you'll need to select data using a SQL query because Gemini will not be able to pull down a list of tables either:


[Click on image for larger view.]

It's a good idea to use that Design button to test the query's result set before clicking Next. Use the red exclamation point (Execute) button to get the data back:


[Click on image for larger view.]

Then click OK, Next, Finish and Close. Here's the very cool result:


[Click on image for larger view.]

Posted by Andrew J. Brust on 07/28/2009


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