Third-party controls for Office PerformancePoint 2007

Are you using? I have been looking for some nice, elegant chart controls for Office PerformancePoint 2007 but still the search is not success. One way to achieve this goal is, using third-party controls with Reporting Services and using them in PerformancePoint reports. I tried with Dundas controls but it did not give the look and feel that I was expecting. My next try was using ChartFX but it did not work well with my environment. I feel that it is because of my operating system that is Windows 2008 (64-bit) and SQL Server 2005 (64-bit). I have opened a ticket with ChartFX support but so far no luck. I heard from a reliable source that controls are being designed by a local company but it has been not opened for other parties. If you guys are using any type of controls with Office PerformancePoint 2007, please let me know.

Next version of SQL Server - Kilimanjaro

Few months back, Microsoft had announced the next version of SQL Server ~Kilimanjaro~ that is due on 2010. Two major things related to the new version are; Project Gemini: Is related to Analysis Services (or it is). It uses column-oriented and in-memory technologies with Microsoft Excel. It seems that this is capable enough for handling 100M records in memory and creating a model for analysis (Are we moving away from star/snowflake schema in relational data warehouses? And things like cube, dimensions…). I saw couple of blog posts regarding Gemini and QlickView, not sure whether Microsoft going to use its technology (or has already used). QlickView is a tool that supports in-memory business analysis that can be quickly implemented with existing data sources. Project Madison: SQL Server is going to handle not only terabyte data but petabyte. Microsoft has acquired DATAllegro technologies for addressing this. Seems Microsoft SQL team has concentrated a lot on Business Intelligence, and we will see a greater enhancement with Kilimanjaro.

My Previous blog posts

If anyone look for my previous blog posts, please visit http://dineshpriyankara.spaces.live.com. I still use live.com blog but not for technical related posts. I may discontinue using it.