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