Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900
to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how
to load the data into a Windows Azure
SQL Database using
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure
SQL Database ok,
SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS
to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either).
To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want
to party on the data I have loaded it all into the
SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a
SQL Azure database provided for the use of the
SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations.
To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report
to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it.
To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download
to play
to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a
SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on
SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased
to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on
SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone,
to connect
to and use for their own means. This database is free for you
to use but
SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the
SQL Server community
to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around
to support this effort by making a voluntary donation
to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going
to be $119.88 per year. If you would like
to contribute
to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal
to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough
to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like
to do. The
SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution
to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the
SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like
to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful
to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet
