Code from book and new XMLA template at SSDM

I just added a couple of new downloads on SQLServerDataMining.com

The first is the sample from chapter 16 (Forecasting in Excel) of my book, Data Mining with SQL Server 2005 which was misposted on the publisher's site (it will be updated there as well, but it's at SSDM for those of you who want it today).

The other download is a simple XMLA template that is surprisingly important since it fills a gap in our DMX language that was blocking common workflows.

DMX has great constructs for creating, training, and managing mining structures and models. Now that SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) has a DMX editor, it's really nice to just open one up and start typing CREATE MINING STRUCTURE ... and do all of your mining right there. However, in general, once you got to INSERT INTO you were stuck (not to mention PREDICTION JOIN). Since we strongly encourage everyone to use OPENQUERY and a named datasource rather than OPENROWSET and a connection string, it would seem that there would be an easy way to create datasources in SSMS. Wrong.

The only "easy" way to create a datasource would be to fire up the BI Dev Studio, open the database, create a datasource in the UI and then switch back to SSMS - a user experience that leaves a bad taste in your mouth - essentially a big hole in the experience.

So the template I added allows you to easily create a datasource from SSMS by loading the template, setting some values (like a name, connection string, etc) and executing. Now you can perform your entire DM workflow directly in SSMS!

Enjoy! I welcome any feedback or many suggestions for new templates.