Melville Thomson's Blog : BI

Looking for a SQL Server/Business Intelligence IT Pro Evangelist

Melville — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:54:00 GMT

Eileen is looking to extend her team and is looking for two new IT Pro Evangelists to join us in the UK. One of these will be a SQL Server/Business Intelligence person. The details for the job are here. What we are looking for is someone who is technical and can enthuse others about the technology. So please upload your CV through the tool . We get to meet and work with some brilliant people.

You can view the team here.

SQL Server Webcasts for the week of December 18 - 22

Melville — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:46:09 GMT

Momentum Webcast: Microsoft Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2005 (Level 100)

Date: Thursday, January 18, 2007 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Momentum Webcast: Microsoft Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2005 (Level 100)

Migrate from Access to SQL Server

Date: Thursday, January 18, 2007 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Migrate from Access to SQL Server

MSDN Webcast: Using Transact-SQL for Recursive Queries in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200)

Monday, December 18, 2006 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Itzik Ben-Gan, Mentor and Co-Founder, Solid Quality Learning

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032318784&Culture=en-US

MSDN Webcast: Overview of Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Application Development APIs (Level 200)

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM Pacific Time

Andrew J. Brust, Chief, New Technology, twentysix New York

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032318788&Culture=en-US

SQL Server Webcasts for December

Melville — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 03:30:00 GMT

Here is a list of SQL Server Webcasts for December. For links to previous webcasts and labs see my previous post.

Introduction to SQL Server 2005 report Builder

Join us as we illustrate the architecture behind Report Builder, demonstrate its capabilities, and explain how it helps you to build business data models for users with ease.

Monday, December 11, 2006 1:00 P.M.–2:30 P.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to SQL Server 2005 Report Builder (Level 200)

Introduction To Data Mining in SQL Server 2005

Tune in to learn how Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is meeting the demands for self-service reporting with Report Builder, an ad hoc reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports and explore corporate data.

Friday, December 15, 2006 11:30 A.M.–1:00 P.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Data Mining with SQL Server 2005 (Level 200)

Using Transact-SQL For Recursive Queries In SQL Server 2005

Join us as we explore recursive CTEs and demonstrate how to use them to answer common requests against graph structures.

Monday, December 18, 2006 11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Using Transact-SQL for Recursive Queries in SQL Server 2005 (Level 200)

Overview Of Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Application Development APIs

Tune in as we cover the ADOMD.NET object model for OLAP data access, the Analysis Management Objects (AMO) library for OLAP database management, and XMLA for SOAP based combination of the two.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time

TechNet Webcast: Introduction to Data Mining with SQL Server 2005 (Level 200)

An Evening of Business Intelligence - Chris Webb and Friends

Melville — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:01:00 GMT

Chris Webb has arranged in conjunction with Tony from UK SQL User Group. Another evening of BI fun. David Parker (MVP) will be speaking about using Visio to visualise your data. Sanjay Nayyar (IMGroup) will be talking about using Microsoft BI and Reporting services with SAP.

The event will be on Wed 29 Nov at 6pm to 9pm

Building 3
Microsoft Campus
Thames Valley Park
Reading
Berkshire
RG6 1WG
United Kingdom

For more info and to register visit http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/

SharePoint 2007 and BI

Melville — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:10:00 GMT

This has been a busy week! I attended a TechNet event in Reading last night 20-Sept-06 On SharePoint the presenter was Nick Swan an MVP who also looks after the SharePoint User Group UK. Eileen asked me to make sure everything was ok with Nick as this was his first TechNet event for us. I also wanted to have a look and see what features for BI and Reporting have been included in the product. Do remember this is still in Beta. I really enjoyed the session and listening to you all afterwards you were blown away with all the new features. Nick has posted all the questions from the session on his blog.

When you install SharePoint SQL Express is included as a default. SQL 2005 is recommended but there is support for SQL 2000.

There is a host of features supported for BI built in out of the box. The main area is providing web and programmatic access to published Office Excel spreadsheets, ease of development of Web based BI dashboards that can incorporate rich, data-bound KPI's, Web Parts and published spreadsheets.

You can create rich BI dashboards that incorporate dynamic KPI's. There is also out of the box default websites for report access and management.

For more information on all the features go to the Microsoft Office SharePoint preview site. There is a product overview document linked from there. The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog. is a really good resource to look at to for release information and fixes.

IMPORTANT

Before installing read http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2006/09/1...

BI Event 22nd June Reading

Melville — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:33:00 GMT

Great news Chris Webb is looking to try and set up a UK BI User Group. I think this was through a discussion with Tony Rogerson from the UK SQL User Group There will be an event in Reading on the evening of the 22nd June you can register for the event on the UK SQL server site above Chris and one other will be speaking so please come along it should be good. If there is any subject you would like to know about please let us know.

Microsoft and Hyperion Collaborate on Business Intelligence Solutions

Melville — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:37:00 GMT

Another great announcement look here for more details. I think this is fantastic news.
On Tuesday 25th April we announced at the Hyperion Users Conference the following four areas of collaboration with Hyperion.

• SSRS reporting from Essbase
• HYSL System 9 Workspace including SSRS report data
• HYSL System 9 reporting from SSAS
• SSIS as an ETL tool for HYSL System 9

Specifically, Hyperion customers will be able to use SQL Server Reporting Services to access Hyperion System 9 BI+ Essbase Analytics, and also will be able to display Microsoft reports in the Hyperion System 9 Workspace environment. In addition, Microsoft customers will be able to access SQL Server Analysis Services data using Hyperion System 9 BI+. Also, Hyperion System 9 will leverage SQL Server Integration Services for data access.

Hyperion is the first BI vendor to embrace Microsoft SQL server to this extent.