19 January 2012
It Will Be an Interesting Year for BI
When you registered on ProjectBotticelli.com, you asked to be notified when we upload new content. This is our second newsletter since we have launched our site a few months ago.
Summary of New Content:
- Power View and BISM: An Introduction (10 min video and an article)
- PI: Performance Intelligence (article)
- Spatial Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint Server (video)
- Multidimensional Analysis with Microsoft Excel and SQL Server (video)
- Data Warehousing and Integration with Microsoft SQL Server (video)
- New PPTs on: Power View, What is New in BI in SQL Server 2012, and BI in the Cloud
News
As we are approaching SQL Server 2012 launch activities this spring, Project Botticelli is preparing a new BI-themed roadshow called "IT in Transformation: BI and Productivity for Your Business Solutions". We are planning to visit 12–15 countries this year. The schedule will be announced in the News section of the site (take our RSS news feed) as soon as it has been finalised, and it will be included in the February newsletter.
At the moment, there are two pieces of content which are only available to registered users (that's you) so consider having an early use of this knowledge before it is made public next month.
First of all, I wanted to share my thoughts on Performance Intelligence, or as, sometimes, I like to call it PI (as in "pie") as that thing that we do when we think we do BI. BI is used in so many places which have little to do with business, like governments, charities, or even in the military. I am always surprised that we keep on calling it BI, while in fact it is not. Read, agree, or disagree with me by leaving comments for this article: PI: Performance Intelligence (article).
There are four new videos. One is very new: Power View and BISM: An Introduction, and it covers the most talked-about aspect of SQL Server 2012 BI. There is a good demo in the video which shows you how to build your own animated bubble chart (scatter plot). I even show BISM and the new SSAS Tabular Mode in this video. Lots of content in just 10 minutes!
The remaining three videos are designed to introduce the more traditional aspects of a BI platform, and are aimed at someone newer to this field:
- Spatial Reporting with Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint Server (video) shows how to build a report using Report Builder and Bing maps. This is a static report (you cannot zoom in and out of the map) yet it is very informative, and takes minutes to build,
- Multidimensional Analysis with Microsoft Excel and SQL Server (video) shows an older functionality of Excel that helps you connect to and work with OLAP cubes, while also showing the new sparklines,
- Data Warehousing and Integration with Microsoft SQL Server (video) is a basic introduction to the world of Data Warehousing, ETL, and Data Integration, and it has a short demo of SSIS, which you may find interesting if you are new to it.
We are running a little late with our plans to offer paid-for, subscription courses and seminars, but they will happen this spring, or with some luck even earlier. The first seminar will focus on the content being prepared for the roadshow, including an in-depth look at Power View and BI Semantic Model, with the second one on Data Mining. First, however, we need to get the web site updated to handle payments, which is scheduled to be completed in February. I hope that you will be pleased with the material, which we are planning to offer this way, as it is being designed to make you more creative and productive in the BI field, bringing you quickly up-to-date with the upcoming software in the minimum amount of time. More about the seminars in the next newsletter.
Request for Feedback
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Thanks for reading and good luck with BI in 2012,
Rafal Lukawiecki, Strategic Consultant and Director, Project Botticelli Ltd
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