Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server

Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server Who This Book Is For This book has more than one audience. The primary audience is professional developers who want to start work on a BI project using SSAS, SSIS, and SSRS. Our approach is one of inclusiveness—we have provided content targeted at both beginning and intermediate BI developers. We have also included information for business decision makers who wish to understand the capabilities of the technology and Microsoft’s associated tools. Because we believe that appropriate architecture is the underpinning of all successful projects, we’ve also included information for that audience. We assume that our readers have production experience with a relational database. We also assume that they understand relational database queries, tables, normalization and joins, and other terms and concepts common to relational database implementations. Although we’ve included some core information about administration of BI solutions, we consider IT pros (or BI administrators) to be a secondary audience for this book. What This Book Is About This book starts by helping the reader develop an intuitive understanding of the complexity and capabilities of BI as implemented using SQL Server 2008, and then it moves to a more formal understanding of the concepts, architecture, and modeling. Next, it presents a more process-focused discussion of the implementation of BI objects, such as OLAP cubes and data mining structures, using the tools included in SQL Server 2008. Unlike many other data warehousing books we’ve seen on the market, we’ve attempted to attain an appropriate balance between theory and practical implementation. Another difference between our book and others is that we feel that data mining is a core part of a BI solution. Because of this we’ve interwoven information about data mining throughout the book and have provided three chapters dedicated to its implementation.