Essential Skills for Microsoft Business Intelligence

This 5 day course provides an introduction to Microsoft Business Intelligence. We will customize this class for organizations that want to focus on particular aspects of data warehousing. Questions? Contact info AT sdgcomputing DOT com or 715-262-3601.

This class has three primary goals:

1. Imagining the possibilities of Business Intelligence

People who choose to attend a 5-day Business Intelligence class obviously have an interest in this technology. But Business Intelligence is still a new concept in many organizations. The most important goal of the class is to help people understand what they can accomplish with Business Intelligence, so that they can use these tools to their full potential.

People learn about the possibilities of Business Intelligence through experimenting with the tools, hearing how other organizations have used these tools, and through discussion of the data situation and business needs in their own organizations.

2. Learning multidimensional (star) schema data modeling.

It's easy to build cubes and dimensions in Analysis Services if your source data already has a multidimensional structure. But most organizations don't have their data in that format. The biggest challenge of implementing Business Intelligence is learning how to design a multidimensional schema and to design the data transformations needed to move data into that schema.

There are many concepts in multidimensional data modeling which need to be thoroughly understood - the star schema, fact tables, dimension tables, measures, dimensions, hierarchies, levels, attributes, etc. There are many challenges in moving data from a relational schema to a star schema, including the problem of changing dimension records.

3. Learning Microsoft's Business Intelligence tools.

The third goal is to become familiar with Microsoft's Business Intelligence tools - primarily Integration Services and Analysis Services in SQL Server 2005. It's not possible to cover everything about these tools in 5 days, but it is possible to get a good start in using them effectively in setting up a Business Intelligence system.

The focus in learning Integration Services is how to convert data from various data sources into a multidimensional data structure that can be used as the basis for a Business Intelligence system. Here are some of the topics covered:

Here are some of the topics that are covered in the consideration of Analysis Services:

Tim Peterson is the instructor for this course. Tim was involved with his first Microsoft SQL Server data warehousing project in 1995 with version 6.0. For several years Tim has devoted most of his time to helping organizations effectively implement Business Intelligence solutions with Microsoft SQL Server. He was the lead author of an OLAP book for SQL Server 7.0 - Microsoft OLAP Unleashed (SAMS, 1999). He also wrote a book on DTS for SQL Server 2000 - Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Data Transformation Services (DTS) (SAMS, 2001). He has provided custom training, consulting, mentoring, and trouble-shooting for companies implementing Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions. Tim is also the designer of CubeSlice and its predecessor products, the Local Cube Task and the OLAP Client Management System.