Business Intelligence Keywords

I mainly write this post for novices who need to begin with Business Intelligence and to be aware of the most Business Intelligence keywords thus they could read any Business Intelligence article without any problem.

Business Intelligence: The art of extracting right information in timely manner to right person from raw data, it doesn’t depend on specific technology but very wide of technologies depend on; like Data Mining. It makes the organization realize its resources, potential and give the Big Image* to the status of its goals.

Operational Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence Systems build on the same Business Intelligence process ETL, Analysis then Reporting but they don’t care about KPIs and Measures more than data listing.

Tactical Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence Systems build on the same Business Intelligence process ETL, Analysis then Reporting beside they give a wide solutions to tactical managers who can use them to get the most of KPIs (Profit in dollars, number of CRM tickets, etc) to take their organization step towards its goals.

Strategic Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence Systems build on the same Business Intelligence process ETL, Analysis then Reporting it helps the top management get the status -very brief status- of the organizations and its step towards its goals.

Measure\Fact: What’s the organization looks for, profit in currency, revenue, number of user come to website, number of CRM tickets, etc…

Dimension: How the Measure\Fact measured per, means profit in currency (Measure\Fact) can be measured per time, sales region, sales person, product type, etc.. so we call time, sales region, sales person, product type dimensions. Simply everything you can group by…

Hierarchy dimension: Dimension has self-relationship like time dimension we may see Year, Quarter, Month, Week, Day and may be more deep details. Simply everything with more than one level (deparment employee).

SQL Server Business Intelligence webcast series

SQLServerGeeks.com cordially invites you to SQL Server Business Intelligence webcast series – with 4 webcasts spread over a week. This is an excellent opportunity to get an upstart with BI on SQL Server. The series is very well crafted with 4 webcasts looking into different facets of BI. If you know nothing about BI, do not miss the first webcast: BI for you. The four webcasts are detailed below. Register Fast. (For clarifications, please write to admin<at>sqlservergeeks<dot>com)

Webcast 1: BI for you

November 6, Friday, 3 pm to 4.30 pm

Webcast 2: Create your first cube

November 9, Monday, 3 pm to 4.30 pm

Webcast 3: Extract data from the cube

November 11, Wednesday, 3 pm to 4.30 pm

Webcast 4: Learn MDX scripting

November 13, Friday, 3 pm to 4.30 pm

To register & browse more details about each webcast, visit www.SQLServerGeeks.com/Events/SQLBIwebcasts.htm

Deploying Reports in Reporting Services Programmatically

May be it’s my bad luck may be something else, but I didn’t find a complete post how to deploy Reports, and Data Sources in Reporting Services in away like BIDS.

First it’s a tool I developed to automate the deployment of BI solution (Creating Data warehouse, installing SSIS packages, creating Jobs, create Cubes and installing reports on Reporting Services Server).

If you don’t have time to read and just need to download the tool, here you’re
Source Code: http://cid-3e2288e7a8e55f56.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public%20folder/Deploying%20Reports%20in%20Reporting%20Services%20Programmatically.zip

Herein, I’ll talk about the last thing which is deploying reports.

P.S: It’s my way in designing such task (Installing reports on Reporting Services Server) and it’s not standard or anything else just (follow your heart :))

Matching Business Intelligence with Cloud Computing

I really liked this post which talks about how could we make use of Cloud Computing in building Business Intelligence solution to draw the Big Image for the organizations

With Cloud Computing fast becoming the next big thing in IT, the jury is still out on how it can best be matched up with Business Intelligence (BI) to deliver real and sustainable benefits to business.

The focus of BI is the gathering, modelling, transforming and analysis of data (often from disparate systems), in order to provide a “big picture” to a business. Traditionally, BI has lagged behind the business it is meant to support. Reporting and data analysis can take a long time to process, and may run outside of business hours in order to reduce impact on the day-to-day operations. Businesses must wait to understand what is going on, and rely on old information to make decisions.

Enter Cloud Computing. The main benefits include lower cost, multiple redundant sites, and scalable provisioning of resources, which in turn allow for business continuity, disaster recovery and on-demand performance improvements.

More on http://xqrx.com/writing/a_cloud.php

Optimizing Performance in SQL Server® Analysis Services

Update. For whom missed it I found it as a post by Carl Rabeler http://sqlcat.com/top10lists/archive/2009/02/24/top-10-performance-and-productivity-reasons-to-use-sql-server-2008-for-your-business-intelligence-solutions.aspx

Pilot-View on Microsoft Gemini 1

I’ll take in somehow big series about Microsoft Gemini and its features, I found it great very fast while loading big dataset and also I submit bug once it occurs.

I’ll talk in this post about Load & Prepare Data (From Database) in Microsoft Gemini…

First, you should have Microsoft Excel 2010 Technical Preview (until now 12-9-2009) which in Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview, don’t you know what’s Gemini check this https://ramymahrous.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/what-you-need-to-know-about-gemini/

First, let’s install Gemini as it’s not by default installed on Excel 2010

If you download it from Microsoft Connect, it comes with two client versions, x64 and x86 choose which fits your processor architecture.

First official video about Gemini from Microsoft

Project Gemini for Excel 2010

What’s Gemini? Project code-name “Gemini” for Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology, such as fast manipulation on large data sets (often in millions of rows), streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through SharePoint 2010.

Video | http://www.microsoft.com/officebusiness/office2010/Default.aspx?vid=Geminiv

Overview of Gemini features

From Microsoft Gemini team blog…

The key question behind Gemini is: how much value can an Excel user derive from Microsoft’s BI stack without having to pick up a book on OLAP, Dimensional Modeling or Analysis Services?

More on http://blogs.msdn.com/gemini/archive/2009/08/24/overview-of-gemini-features.aspx

All about Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Download SQL Server 2008 R2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E19689BD-38DD-46C4-8645-F58CA4D61D1F&displaylang=en

What’s new in SQL Server Integration Services: No new features they just fixed some bugs: http://blogs.msdn.com/mattm/archive/2009/08/14/no-new-features-in-for-integration-services-in-sql-server-2008-r2.aspx

What’s new in SQL Server Analysis Services: I didn’t find any information about that!! if you know please drop a link.

What’s new in SQL Server Reporting Services: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2009/08/11/sql-server-2008-r2-august-ctp-what-s-new-in-reporting-services.aspx

Microsoft Gemini: http://www.microsoft.com/officebusiness/office2010/Default.aspx?vid=Gemini or https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=21090 to know about Microsoft Gemini

A small stand-alone MSI for Report Builder 3.0, August CTP, is now available for download here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=160384

Download packages for SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP are available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e19689bd-38dd-46c4-8645-f58ca4d61d1f

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2009/08/14/report-builder-3-0-august-ctp.aspx

Integrating SSIS with C# to deliver very scalable Data-Driven Solution

نوضح في هذه المقاله استخدام ال SSIS  لبناء C# application to get very scalable data-driven solution  و كيفيه ارتباط ال C#  بالـ SSIS

ما هم ال SSIS  ؟؟ كيفيه الحصول عليه ؟؟ وماهي مميزاته؟؟ وفيما يستخدم اكثر؟؟

اولا SSIS  تعني SQL Server Integration Services  وهى احدى منتجات ميكروسوفت ويأتي مع جميع نسخ ال SQL Server  ما عدا ال Express  كان يسمى فيما سبق DTS  لكن SSIS  يعتبر منتج جديد وليس تحديثا من ال DTS

هي اداه قامت ميكروسوفت بتطويره و اخراجه للسوق عام 2007 وتهدف الى نقل البيانات من اكثر من Data Repository  الى Data Repository  اخر مثلا نقل البيانات من ملف نصي، ملف Excel  او قاعاده بيانات SQL or Access  الى جدول في قاعده بيانات في ال SQL Server  دون الحاجه لوجود SQL Server  ولا يجب مصدر البيانات او وصول البيانات SQL Server بأختصار يكمن استخدمها لنقل البيانات من ملف نصي الى قاعده بيانات Oracle تعتبر ال SSIS  اداه ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load)  اي انها تقوم بأخد البيانات من المصادر تحسين البيانات بشكل وتنظيمه وبعد هذا نقلها الى نقطه الوصول.