Connecting PerformancePoint 2010 site with Dashboard Designer throws error

Recently I had a problem with connecting to a PerformancePoint 2010 site using Dashboard Designer.

I created a new site in SharePoint 2010 using the "Business Intelligence Center" template and started the Dashboard Designer. When I tried to connect to the site, the Dashboard Designer failed to connect and throws the following error : "The URL is not available, does not reference a SharePoint site, or you do not have permission to connect".

When a System Administrator (working for our customer) checked the Event Logs (Administrative Tools | Event Viewer | Windows Logs | Application), he saw the following message : "Login failed for user : domain\username". After some research, it appears that the Service Account under which the PerformancePoint Service runs, did not have sufficient permissions.

The System Administrator executed the following commands in the SharePoint 2010 Management Shell to fix this problem:

$w = Get-SPWebApplication("Web application name")

$w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\username") 

For more information about how to grant a managed account access to the content databases where PerformancePoint data will be stored, read this article on Microsoft Technet.

Sharepoint 2010 Business Intelligence Center Template Missing

One of our customers is using SharePoint 2010 with SQL Server 2008 R2. Everything in their SharePoint environment seemed to be working fine, but when we wanted to create a new "Business Intelligence Center" subsite, we didn't see the template.

 

After the customer activated the following settings in the root of their Sharepoint site, the "Business Intelligence Center" template was available for us:

• Site Settings | Site Actions | Site Collection Administration | Site Collection Features | Activate SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
• Site Settings | Site Actions | Site Collection Administration | Site Collection Features | Activate PerformancePoint Services Site collection features
• Site Settings | Site Actions | Site Collection Administration | Site Collection Features | Activate PerformancePoint Services Site Features
  
  

SSIS datatypes VS SQL Server datatypes

Often it can be extremely confusing when you encounter SSIS data types.  At first glance they seem to be nothing like SQL Server data types.  That's why I wanted to write this blogpost,  below a conversion chart of SSIS data types to SQL Server data types.  This information is readily available on MSDN but it always seems difficult to find.  

SSIS Data Type	SSIS Expression	SQL Server
single-byte signed integer	(DT_I1)
two-byte signed integer	(DT_I2)	smallint
four-byte signed integer	(DT_I4)	int
eight-byte signed integer	(DT_I8)	bigint
single-byte unsigned integer	(DT_UI1)	tinyint
two-byte unsigned integer	(DT_UI2)
four-byte unsigned integer	(DT_UI4)
eight-byte unsigned integer	(DT_UI8)
float	(DT_R4)	real
double-precision float	(DT_R8)	float
string	(DT_STR, «length», «code_page»)	char, varchar
Unicode text stream	(DT_WSTR, «length»)	nchar, nvarchar, sql_variant, xml
date	(DT_DATE)	date
Boolean	(DT_BOOL)	bit
numeric	(DT_NUMERIC, «precision», «scale»)	decimal, numeric
decimal	(DT_DECIMAL, «scale»)	decimal
currency	(DT_CY)	smallmoney, money
unique identifier	(DT_GUID)	uniqueidentifier
byte stream	(DT_BYTES, «length»)	binary, varbinary, timestamp
database date	(DT_DBDATE)	date
database time	(DT_DBTIME)
database time with precision	(DT_DBTIME2, «scale»)	time(p)
database timestamp	(DT_DBTIMESTAMP)	datetime, smalldatetime
database timestamp with precision	(DT_DBTIMESTAMP2, «scale»)	datetime2
database timestamp with timezone	(DT_DBTIMESTAMPOFFSET, «scale»)	datetimeoffset(p)
file timestamp	(DT_FILETIME)
image	(DT_IMAGE)	image
text stream	(DT_TEXT, «code_page»)	text
Unicode string	(DT_NTEXT)	ntext

Hope this helps!