Developing Microsoft Business Intellegance Solutions with SQL Server2008

Developing Microsoft Business Intellegance Solutions with SQL Server2008, the 2007 Office System and Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

This was an 8 hour pre-conference seminar that discussed Business Intelligence Solutions.
The main areas that were discussed were as following:

• Integration Services is used to get the data needed for the warehouse and Analysis Services is used to find patterns in the data.
• Enterprise data warehousing/Information management – the main data warehousing areas are Cubes (OLAP) and Data Mining.
• Data Mart/Integrated Reporting and Analytics – The main ways to report on warehoused data are Reporting Services, Excel and PerformancePoint 2008.
• Business Process/Activity Management
• Operational reporting
• Reporting Services:
  - Developer uses the Visual Studio and includes VB or C# to code bells and whistles.
  - There is now a web report designer that allows power users (non-programmer) to use reporting services.
  - Report Builder – adhoc reporting tool and will require underlying support from the DBA.
  - Reporting Services 2008 no longer requires IIS.
• Will need the following tools to be a BI developer
  - Business Intelligence Development Studio(BIDS) is run through the Visual Studio
  - SQL Server Management Studio
• Basic Workflow for creating a warehouse
  - Populate the data warehouse
  - Develop reports
  - Build Multdimensional db
  - Produce reports bases on the multidimensional db
  - Enhance online website
  - Build dashboard
  - Create scorecard
  - Develop a planning app.
• Additionally talked about BI using SharePoint by building Dashboards. Speaker was not an expert on this subject so he only covered the topic at a very high level.
• If we want the AdventureWorks database for testing of a warehouse we will need to download it from the CodePlex website for SQL server 2008.
  

Summary Comments:
Weston could use some of the Cube (OLAP) and Reporting features, especially for CPLitePM and some of the future scorecards. At this point I don’t think we are a good fit for Data Mining or using Sharepoint Web parts. Data Mining is used more in the retail industry to determine patterns in the data based on predetermined algorithms. Additionally, we are not on SharePoint 2007. When we go the Sharepoint 2007, there is a much easier interface to create web parts and allow the use to select them for use.

Please see the following link to see the seminar PowerPoint presentations for the Pre-Conferences: https://www.msteched.com/dev/ Login: preconferences Passoword: rocks!