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INTRODUCING THE
CHICAGO SQL BI USER GROUP
AND
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 101
January 17th, 2012
The Business Intelligence User Group of Chicago
Presented by: Emre Motan and ChiSQLBI Board
Agenda
Introducing the Chicago SQL BI User Group
• Introduction to PASS
• BI Professionals and Chicago
• Introducing the Chicago SQL BI User Group
• Topics of Interest for Members, Speakers, and Sponsors
Business Intelligence 101
• What is Business Intelligence?
• Microsoft BI vs. The Competition
• Components in Microsoft’s BI Stack
• Demo of SQL 2012’s PowerView application
Introduction to PASS
• The Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS)
sponsors chapters around the world.
• Chicago’s local groups include one downtown and one in
the western suburbs.
BI Professionals and Chicago
• SQL Server BI used by many companies
• SQL Server BI professionals in high demand by recruiters
• Existing PASS SSUGs in Chicago focus on DBA topics
• Existing BI groups in Chicago are multi-faceted
• Business Intelligence User Group of Chicago (Meetup.com)
• The Chicago Business Intelligence Group (Meetup.com)
• Business Intelligence Roundtable (ITA)
• Need for SQL Server BI-focused group
The Chicago SQL BI User Group
• Opportunity for members to meet, learn, and network
• Speakers, both experienced and novice, offered chance
to present knowledge and build speaking portfolio
• Sponsors sought to provide food, prizes, and swag in
exchange for recognition
• SQL Server User Groups collaborate for events such as
SQL Saturday and the PASS Summit
Board of Directors
• Marcello Benati
• Director of BI, Rightpoint Consulting
• Jung Choi
• Data Architect, Sg2
• Tom Huguelet
• BI Architect, contextQ, BlueGranite, SolidQ
• Tom Jaskula
• Senior BI Consultant, MPS Partners
• Jake Kremer
• Solutions Architect, Project Leadership Associates
• Emre Motan
• Data Architect, Northwestern University Medical EDW
Topics of Interest (examples)
• Data Warehousing using SQL Server
• Data modeling, dimensional analysis
• Technical challenges and approaches
• SSIS
• Best practices, novel applications, data warehouse implementation
• SSRS
• Portal management, SharePoint integration, novel designs
• SSAS
• Cube development, optimization, management
• Data mining principles and applications
• SQL BI Enterprise Architecture
What is Business Intelligence?
• Philosophically, it is the process of transforming data into
information that enables valuable, actionable decisions
• The business purpose of BI is to derive value from
decisions enabled by analysis on business data typically
from operational systems
• In practice, BI refers to the management, transformation,
storage, analysis, and presentation of information
How does BI work?
SSIS & SQL Server
SSAS
SSRS
SSRS
Portal
SharePoint
Excel with
PowerPivot
PowerView
How Microsoft Meets BI Needs
• Microsoft offers SQL Server and its Business Intelligence stack
• SQL Server holds data and provides T-SQL query engine
• SSIS (Integration Services) provides tools to extract, transform, and
load data (ETL)
• SSAS (Analysis Services) provides tools to build multidimensional
databases, develop data mining models, and query engine from cubes
• SSRS (Reporting Services) provides tool to build reports and a portal
to deploy reports so end users can run reports
• Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) is Visual Studio
development environment for SQL BI
Major Players in BI Market
• In 2010, Gartner put Microsoft in the “leaders” quadrant
with 8.7% market share along with Oracle, Microstrategy,
IBM, and others.
2010
2010 Market
2009
2009 Market 2009-2010
Revenue
Share (%) Revenue
Share (%)
Growth
SAP
2,413.10
22.9
2,066.20
22.3
16.8
Oracle
1,645.80
15.6
1,350.50
14.6
21.9
SAS Institute
1,386.50
13.2
1,324.60
14..3
4.7
IBM
1,222.00
11.6
1,135.60
12.2
7.6
Microsoft
913.7
8.7
739.5
8
23.6
Other Vendors 2,940.60
27.9
2,661.50
28.7
10.5
Total
10,521.80
100
9,277.90
100
13.4
Company
Traditional BI vs. Self-Service BI
• Microsoft intends to cater to both traditional and self-
service BI customers with its varied offerings
Traditional BI
Information is delivered by:
- Reports via subscription
- Reports in SSRS portal
- Reports in SharePoint
- Static Dashboards
Competitors:
Oracle, IBM, SAP
Self-Service BI
Users develop information by:
- Querying against cubes and data
warehouse using Excel with
PowerPivot
- Browsing and drilling down
interactive dashboards using
PowerView
Competitors:
Qlikview, Tableau
How do you purchase SQL Server?
• Single Users
• Demo licenses, SQL Server Express, and Developer edition are
available for a nominal price ($50)
• Boxed Software
• Companies can purchase software and install on their own servers
• BI Appliances
• Custom-built hardware with software and customizations included
can be bought from vendors such HP and their Business Decision
Appliance
• Cloud
• Microsoft offers SQL Azure (SQL Server) and Reporting Services
over their cloud network
SSIS – Integration Services
• Tools to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data
• Extract data from source databases or flat files
• Transform data using SSIS components
• Load data into destination tables or flat files
• Can be used for a multitude of tasks, not just populating a
database
• File copying, moving, automation, etc.
• Querying analytical applications
• Parsing files such as XML and outputting contents
• For BI, typically used to populate ODS and data marts
• Can be used to merge data and populate master
reference data based on inputs
SSAS – Analysis Services
• Provides analytical capabilities on top of SQL Server
• Allows creation of “cubes” which are multidimensional
databases
• Cubes can be considered as highly optimized pivot tables
• Numerical data is held in “fact” table (e.g. inventory count, dollars)
• Attributes are held in “dimension” tables (e.g. products, countries)
• End users can query cubes using Excel or data can be
fed to others applications like SSRS reports and data
mining models
• MDX language is used to query SSAS cubes; DMX
language used to query Data Mining models built on
SSAS cubes
SSRS – Reporting Services
• Report building and presentation application
• Users build reports in BIDS and deploy to SSRS portal
• Portal manages security by role
• Subscriptions can be programmed to deliver reports
• Dashboards are a popular use of SSRS
• Empowers management to get high level view of metrics and then
dig deeper into specific areas via drill-down reports
• Example: Northwestern uses custom built .NET portal on
top of SSRS to management authorization in a securityheavy organization
• E.G. Users can browse reports but have to request access to view
contents
Solutions for MS BI Shortcomings
• Metadata Management
• Northwestern created a Metadata Browser that scrapes metadata from
SQL system tables.
• Packages that populate data warehouse tables (both ODS and DM)
modify metadata repository with data such as last populated date
• SSIS Package Management and Auditing
• Version control is possible (packages are XML files) but cumbersome
• Northwestern uses custom auditing solution for packages (ETL
Execution Logs, metadata columns to each destination like execution
GUID and datetime)
• SSIS frameworks exist, such as in book SSIS 2008 Problem, Design,
and Solution
• Managing jobs and schedules
• SQL Server Agent should be used to schedule jobs and track history
• Third-Party products such as SQL Sentry are useful for auditing and
management
Demo – PowerView