SQL Server Magazine: What’s the minimum Microsoft Office version required? Is Gemini targeted at Office 2007?
Farmer: It’s targeted at Office 2010.
SQL Server Magazine: So it won’t work without Excel 2010?
Farmer: It won’t work without Excel 2010. You need that for the small percentage of people who are the power users. When it comes to consuming the analysis, then you’ll be able to consume it with the thin client because Excel Services renders it. So from the point of view of rolling it out with Office 2010 you need SharePoint 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Excel Services 2010 on the server. The power users on the client need Excel 2010. Excel Services gives a very complete and satisfying slicing and dicing experience on the thin client in a web browser. So really the deployment isn’t as challenging as some people might think.
Also, we provide a really nice setup. You run a SQL Server 2008 R2 setup and if you don’t have a SharePoint farm we’ll say “Insert your SharePoint disc and we’ll go ahead and install the farm for you and configure it with all the defaults that you need for Gemini.” So it’s actually very cool. Even if you’re not a SharePoint administrator, the setup will walk you through the process of setting up the SharePoint farm and configuring it, which we know could be a challenge if you’re not familiar with it.
SQL Server Magazine: So it seems that Gemini is split. There’s a server part of it, which is the next version of Analysis Services, and the client part. Tell us a little bit more about the end-user experience.
Farmer: The information worker opens Excel 2010 and the Gemini add-in. In that environment it’s still essentially Analysis Services technology. It’s just a DLL rather than a server. It’s working locally. Users can bring in data from many sources. They can go to the corporate warehouse, bring that data into their environment, and work with millions of rows. Gemini can connect to any database. Flat files—no problem.
The decisions information workers make aren’t driven solely from the corporate data warehouse. They may have information on industry trends that they’ve downloaded from one of the analyst conferences. They may have a table of information they find on the web. How do they integrate that? Today, with an IT-driven environment, it’s very difficult to get that information and integrate it because it’s not in the corporate system. But I can go to Gemini and I can serve myself and create my ad hoc data. I can do my ad hoc analysis. Other data sources Gemini can consume are Atom feeds and XML feeds.
Using Gemini, you can subscribe to data feeds as easily as you can subscribe to a blog in Internet Explorer or [Microsoft Office] Outlook. In SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, every time a report is issued it will be available as a data feed. If an information worker finds a report and wants to use that data in an analysis, the worker can click the Feed button and subscribe to it.
Today, how does an IT administrator make data available to information workers from complex ERP or CRM systems? Are they going to learn the complex operational schema or query language of the ERP system? There may be thousands of reports. All these reports will be available as data sources in Gemini.
How will they be provisioned? The security model is the same as the security model that’s used for the reports, so there’s no new security model to learn. It’s just that the report comes with the data source. Administrators provision data more easily than ever before.
SQL Server Magazine: That’s interesting. End users will be very familiar with their reports, and they know what they want from their reports.
Farmer: Absolutely. And they don’t have to navigate to them. They know how to find them. They’re already familiar with them. And also, even if the report is graphical, it could be a pie chart; it could even be a nested report. We’ll still bring that data in just fine.
SQL Server Magazine: Will SQL Server 2008 R2 Gemini also tie in to Visual Studio 2010? Will Silverlight be available for these reports?
Farmer: No, this is something that you create entirely in the Excel environment. Remember what I was saying about familiarity—I often call it "radical familiarity." An information worker goes into Gemini, brings in data, maybe does some calculations, and now wants to build a report. The reporting environment is not new. It’s not a Silverlight report. You don’t have to open Visual Studio.
We’ve done some additional things that make it nice. We’ve added this feature called “Slicers.” Slicers are visual filters that you can arrange around pivot tables and pivot charts. Slicers allow you to see what’s selected and what’s not selected. It’s a very easy environment. In many ways the most radical thing about Gemini is what you don’t have to learn.