Business Intelligence Showcase

This page accesses a SQL Server Analysis Services cube using ADOMD.NET. An AdomdCommand object executes a dynamic MDX query and returns a CellSet. A CellSet is a multi-dimensional data structure that represents "tuples" - sets of values that represent the intersection of a set of dimensions in a data cube.
Custom pod code is used to parse the CellSet into a Datatable. A standard GridView control is bound to this data table.
The data in the cube was obtained from the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration's FARS website, re-keyed to allow for better querying, and used to populate a cube in Analysis Services. The query and the CellSet parser currently only support 2 dimensions, but could easily be extended to display more than 2, similar to Microsoft's Pivot control.

About the data: FARS contains data about 37,248 fatal traffic accidents in 2007. These accidents involved 56,100 vehicles and 93,722 persons. 41,059 fatalities were reported in total, with 35,555 fatalities among occupants of motor vehicles (the rest being pedestrians, bicyclists, etc). The measure of our cube that is shown here is the number of fatalities among motor vehicle occupants. It is important to understand, though, that the dimensions used for the queries (such as age) do not apply to fatalities, but to the drivers of the involved vehicles. Our cube only contains queryable data about drivers. The fatality could have been the driver, another person in the vehicle, or a person in another vehicle involved in the same accident. This is not evident from the data, since FARS only reports the number of fatalities, but does not further identify them.

Please keep also in mind that this data was compiled from police reports, and that there is a lack of consistency in how the data was captured, particulary when it comes to unknown values. 99, 98, -1, 0 etc were apparently all used when the speed limit was either not known, or none applied. On the other hand, most of the accidents involving ATVs and snowmobiles were recorded with speed limits of up to 65 mph, which probably makes no sense. In addition, there is no information about weather and road conditions.

Despite the shortcomings of the data, the cube can be used to reveal interesting correlations between certain aspects of motor vehicle accidents.

The Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is a tool used to measure and quantify performance on important dimensions of care and service. The set of standardized measures is developed and maintained by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

This page uses the Microsoft Chart Control for ASP.NET. Chart data is obtained from a SQL Server database (using Linq to SQL) and is dynamically fed to the control. The chart type is a range bar chart, and we added strip lines showing national averages.
The Microsoft Chart control is based on Dundas Chart source code version 5.5. Microsoft acquired the rights for the technology in 2007 and integrated parts in SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. The chart control for .Net 3.5 is a separate download, but will probably be fully integrated in one of the upcoming releases.

Charts can be made interactive, since many elements support post-backs. The zoom feature with the Ajax slider on this page does not do justice to the possibilities.
How to read the charts: