Microsoft Business Intelligence
For the past 7 years I have worked at a major telecom as a reporting specialist aka BI analyst. My core functions have revolved around creating a reporting system which extracted data from large data warehouses and exported the data in summary to Excel spreadsheets, pdfs, HTML pages, XML, and various other formats. I have been using an enterprize level BI tool (InformationBuilders WebFOCUS) which easily handled the variety of data sources and complex queries. It didn’t hurt that the tools were on very powerful servers.
My work in BI has led to me learning about HTML, CSS, and other web technologies which then helped me do projects like this website. However, my divisions particular niche within the industry is shrinking and the end of my division is within site. So I have started looking for that next employment opportunity. The main thing I have noticed is that the tools I use are not in high demand, but some less costly (but also less functional) tools seem to be the new standards. There is some consolidation in the BI industry as Oracle grabbed up some smaller companies to enhance its suite of BI tools.
As I put out my resume I was contacted by a company which offers training in the new BI tools from Microsoft, which includes SQL Server 2005, Reporting Tools, and some development tools for building rich datasources and report servers. So this got me curious about MSBI.
I thumbed through a dozen or so books about SQL Server and found most of the concepts were similar to what I have been doing over the years and offered a few new tricks. The best set of books I slowed down for were a series by Brian Larsen (Osborn publishing). I found they were well written for the beginner and novice developer. I also checked out the Amazon reviews and found that all the books in the series had good reviews, so I purchases one.
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After I read “Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005″ I feel I could work with SS and deliver a basic system without even having touched the software. “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services 2005″ will be my next read to see how MS reporting tools compare with the tools I am used to.
If you are venturing into the world of Business Intelligence I recommend evaluating the job market where you are in terms of learning or implementing a BI tool. BI tools gain market share and lose market share quite rapidly, so it would not hurt to be aware of Microsofts offerings. Currently I see more job postings for Business Objects/Crystal Reports, but there are a few for Cognos as well. Brio is not on my radar, nor are any of the smaller tool suite offerings. WebFOCUS seems to be popular in certain industries which they have specifically targeted but seems to lack a wider audience.
If evaluating which BI tools to purchase you will want to consider the types of data resources you will be accessing, output formats available for reports, database mirroring capability, availability of experienced programmers in your particular BI tool, server requirements, user/client needs, ability to schedule tasks and reports, user security, data security, dashboards and web analytical tools, develoment language of system, developer tools, system scalabilty, number of concurrent users, and much much more. Marketing’s pidly requirements about how reports should look are not part of the decision making process. Shop smart and consider the long term (10+ years) of your systems.