In this second post looking at some of the new capabilities of SQL Server 2012 and how they can be leveraged in your Project Server farm, we are going to look at PowerView. PowerView was originally announced as Project Crescent and has wowed pretty much anyone that has seen it. In essence, PowerView allows you to build visualisations of your data using a simple drag and drop interface that are ‘Presentation Ready’ meaning there is no nasty wiring up of data, simply drag your data onto the surface and being analyzing it.

Project Server has a fantastic reporting story, with a dedicated reporting database containing pretty much every piece of data you put in, and a myriad of ways to retrieve, tabulate and visualize that data for the end user. With a little customization or configuration it is possible to build reports that will show the status of the project portfolio, risk and issues and just about anything you want to see. With such powerful reporting it can quickly become difficult for a Project or Portfolio manager to identify the projects or information they are interested in seeing.

Back in 2011 I sat in a session at TechEd Australia where Carolyn Chau showed off a number of the reporting enhancements coming in SQL Server 2012. SQL Server 2012 is a massive release, providing a stack of new features across all aspects of the server . Some of my favourites include things like Availability groups, support for Server core, a new Visual Studio based management to name but a few.