Power BI – Power Query Update

Couple of new features have been added to Power Query and they are available with the latest version of Power Query: 2.11.3625.

Here is the download link for Power Query: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39379

New features added;

• New Data Sources
• Improvements to Query Load Settings
• Improvements to Query Refresh behaviors in Excel
• New Transformations available in the Query Editor
• Other Usability Improvements

This blog post describes updates available with new version: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/archive/2014/05/06/new-updates-for-power-query.aspx

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) / Business Intelligence Studio (BIDS) for 2014

Are you searching for SQL Server Data Tools or Business Intelligence Development Studio after installing SQL Server 2014? If so, you are reading the right post.

SQL Server Data Tools or Business Intelligence Development Studio is used for creating projects on Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, etc. Usually this gets automatically installed when SQL Server is installed but not with SQL Server 2014. This needs to be separately downloaded and installed.

This is basically a set of Visual Studio project templates that allows us to work with Microsoft SQL Server Business intelligence product suite. With SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, it was named as Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and with SQL Server 2012, Microsoft named it as SQL Server Data tools (SSDT). However, confusing us, there was another tool available with the same name which was used for creating database projects with Visual Studio. In order to clear the confusion, with SQL Server 2014, it has been named as Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio (SSDTBI).

You can download Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2012 from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36843

This is still not ready for Visual Studio 2013. Microsoft initially made it available but the release has been called off due to some side by side issues with SSDT.
(Updated 02-Jun-2014). Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools – Business Intelligence for Visual Studio 2013 is now available. Read more on this from:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42313

Cumulative Update packages for SQL Server 2008 R2, 2012, and 2014

Cumulative update #12 is available for SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2. Refer the following link for downloading it and understanding the fixes done.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2938478

Cumulative update #9 is available for SQL Server 2012 SP1. Refer the following link for downloading it and understanding the fixes done.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2931078

Cumulative update #1 is available for SQL Server 2014. Refer the following link for downloading it and understanding the fixes done.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2931693

For more info on SQL Server versions and service packs, refer:http://dinesql.blogspot.com/2014/01/versions-and-service-packs-of-sql.html