The third module of our SQL Server 2012 BI tutorial introduces the newest addition to the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform: Power View, which is part of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services. You will hear explanations of the fundamental concepts of Power View, such as Measures, and you will see all of its key features, including data visualizations, such as its crowning glory, the animated Bubble Chart, in 17 hi-def easy-to-follow demos. You will hear how to source data for Power View, and how to share your reports by exporting them to PowerPoint, as a presentation, with slides that literally come alive in front of your audience!

The fourth module of the course focuses on the most imporant Microsoft BI innovation of the year, the new BI Semantic Model (BISM), and its implementation as a tabular model hosted by SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services (SSAS) Tabular Mode. Tabular Mode adds important enterprise features that PowerPivot does not have, like row-level security or partitioning for faster data updates—both shown in this module in a step-by-step demo. This 80-minute video also includes discussions of the new concepts, its architecture and scenarios (such as MDX over relational or tabular over multidimensional), diagrams, and an in-depth, 35 minute block, showing you all key BISM and SSAS Tabular Mode principles in thirteen detailed, hi-res demonstrations, which you can select, follow, pause and repeat at any time, by using Jump to a chapter links. Bear in mind, that if you intend to follow this module, you should also watch the Introduction to PowerPivot for SQL Server 2012 video, which we published last month, as all the new features of PowerPivot are also features of BISM.

As Big Data is on everybody's mind, and it is the currently hottest buzzword in BI, we have an in-depth discussion of its meaning in the context of the Microsoft Application Platform. The 3000-word article, Apache Hadoop, Big Data, Microsoft is a good overview of the technology and it discusses some of the scenarios how you could use this powerful technology to help transform your business. This article is also a recommended follow-up to the first module of the SQL BI course, as it continues the discussion of Hadoop started there.

We will open up this article to all site visitors in May, so get your priority access benefit now—however, please note, we have no plans to open up Full Access Member video training modules this way, they will remain available only to our paid members.

Although the SQL Server 2012 launch is now behind us, we are not going to stop producing great video content for you. We have plans for training modules that go further in-depth, building upon the four introductory modules that are already available. In particular, you will see content on Data Analysis Expressions, Data Mining, and Analysis Services performance and optimisation techniques, including more on xVelocity. As soon as we can, we will provide content related to the upcoming new versions of the dashboarding and scorecard technologies. I would also like to create content for users who are very new to BI, as well as for the decision makers, who wish to better understand the business value of BI. We have even more plans, but it is better to ship rather than talk, so we will just keep you notified, by email, every time we launch new content, but not more often than once per month. Of course, feel free to take the RSS feeds from the various parts of the site, or follow me on Twitter: @rafaldotnet for an almost daily micro-dose of BI.