BI Book - Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles

Dear friends, 
The last two months was a big challenge for me. Working at one of the best BI companies of the world (BI4ALL) is not an easy task! But everything is running fine and it’s really amazing working with wonderful colleagues as I have at BI4ALL. But the reason for this email is to spread a marketing message from the Packt Publishing who gave me all the conditions and support to write an amazing SSIS book with my friend Reza Rad. 

Birmingham-based IT publisher Packt Publishing is about to publish its 1000th title. Packt books are renowned among developers for being uniquely practical and focused. Packt books cover highly specific tools and technologies which IT professionals might not expect to see a high quality book on. Packt would like you to join them in celebrating this milestone with a surprise gift – to get involved you just need to have already registered, or sign up for a free Packt account before 30th September 2012. Packt published their first book in April 2004. One of the most prolific and fastest growing tech book publishers in the world, they now have books on everything from web development to web graphics, e-learning to e-commerce, IT architecture to games, and app development. Packt supports many of the Open Source projects covered by its books through a project royalty donation, which has contributed over £300,000 to Open Source projects up to now. As part of the celebration Packt is allocating $30,000 to share between projects and authors in a genuinely unique way, soon to be disclosed on their website. 

Dave Maclean, founder of Packt Publishing explains, “At Packt we set out 8 years ago to bring practical, up to date and easy to use technical books to the specialist tools and technologies that had been largely overlooked by IT publishers. Today, I am really proud that with our authors and partners we have been able to make useful books available on over 1000 topics and make our contribution to the development community.” 

For more information about Packt, the kind of books they publish, and to sign-up for a free account before the 30th of September, 2012, please visit their website: www.PacktPub.com 

BI Challenge – Moving to BI4ALL

This week I’ve started a new challenge in my life: I moved to BI4ALL (www.bi4all.pt). BI4ALL is a specialized company on Business Intelligence and Corporate Governance and was identified by Microsoft and IBM as a company with more experience in developing Business Intelligence solutions in the Portuguese market. It has for some years a reference for me in BI, not only by the quality of the solutions developed, but also the quality of people who work here (about 60) that I had the privilege of socialize over the last years.

The BI4ALL with more than 10 years has the headquarters in Lisbon and is investing heavily in Porto, where it already has a customer base that represents 10% of the company and a Research Center for Business Intelligence Mobile Solutions (over a year). The purpose of BI4ALL will be to continue the growing on this amazing world of Business Intelligence and give the Portuguese companies a competitive advantage over its competitors. This blog has more than 5 years and I will continue to share my insights and news on this amazing field!

Pedro

BI Book - SSIS 2012 book winners

This week I’ve started a new challenge in my life: I moved to BI4ALL (www.bi4all.pt). BI4ALL is a specialized company on Business Intelligence and Corporate Governance and was identified by Microsoft and IBM as a company with more experience in developing Business Intelligence solutions in the Portuguese market. It has for some years a reference for me in BI, not only by the quality of the solutions developed, but also the quality of people who work here (about 60) that I had the privilege of socialize over the last years.

The BI4ALL with more than 10 years has the headquarters in Lisbon and is investing heavily in Porto, where it already has a customer base that represents 10% of the company and a Research Center for Business Intelligence Mobile Solutions (over a year). The purpose of BI4ALL will be to continue the growing on this amazing world of Business Intelligence and give the Portuguese companies a competitive advantage over its competitors

This blog has more than 5 years and I will continue to share my insights, work and news on this amazing field!

We in BI4ALL make the things happen!!

Pedro

BI Book - Win Free Copies of SSIS 2012 book

I'm happy to inform you that the SSIS book that I wrote with my friend (Reza Rad) is now published!! I also want to let you know that Packt Publishing accepted my contest suggestion for offering 4 books (2 Print books + 2 e-books) to my blog readers. You just need to use your Twitter or LinkedIn accounts! Keep reading to find out how you can be one of the Lucky Winner.

How to Enter?

1-) Tweet this post and/or share this post in LinkedIn – you can use the tweet button at the top of the article.

2-) Visit the book page link, check out what’s inside and see what you would like to learn most from the books – pick one that you like the best

3-) Choose one of the following options to win the book:
Option 01 - Enter a comment under your twitter or LinkedIn account on what you’re looking forward to learn most in from this book. The two best comments win one print book and one e-book.
Example Comment:
"I'd like to own the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services Expert Cookbook as I'd like to master all transformations in SSIS and their usages with real-world scenarios"

Option 02 - Write a post/article under Business Intelligence concepts to be published on this blog. The best two original posts/articles win one print book and one e-book

4-) Be sure that you are following me on Twitter (@PerfeitoP) and/or also on LinkedIn when the contest ends to monitor your participation and let you know the contest results. (Winners from the U.S. and Europe can either choose a physical copy of the book or the eBook. Users from other locales are limited to the eBook only)

Deadline

The contest for the best comment (Twitter and LinkedIn) and best post/article will close on 15/June/2012

Promo codes

If you don’t want to participate on this contest but want to buy the book, here you have special discount codes to use in the Packt Publishing website. They are as follows:
25% discount on print book PRSQL25
35% discount on e-book EBSQL35

Do let me know if you have any questions. Hope you all enjoy this book and let us know your feedback

BI White Paper - BI for Midsize Organizations

Today I’m opening a new section on the blog… the “BI White Paper”! And in this first post, I want to share with you a very interesting whitepaper that I was reading during the weekend. This whitepaper was written by Michael Schiff from SAP and is free (but requires registration). The article is written in a very interesting and objective way. I’ve included below the conclusion provided in the whitepaper to let you know more about it. I hope you enjoy the paper as much as me!

"Managers have the responsibility to make the best decisions possible, based upon the data available to them to learn more about how products from at the time. If their ability to analyze this data and transform it into useful information is improved, the overall quality of their decisions will improve as well. Business intelligence provides a spectrum of tools and solutions to support this aim. It’s the underlying technology behind more effective decision making. By helping align individual and departmental efforts with overall corporate strategies, it should lead to improved organizational results.

While many small and midsize companies have relied on spreadsheets as their primary Bi tool, most of them have come to realize that this is a stopgap solution. This is not to say that spreadsheets should be abandoned; rather, they should be a part of an organization’s Bi tool set. The key is to choose the right commercial Bi product suite that integrates with spreadsheet environments while supporting your long-term growth"

Read more downloading the white paper here

BI Book - Free SQL Server 2012 e-book

Dear friends,
If you want to know the new Microsoft SQL Server 2012, I highly recommend you to download the SQL Server 2012 free e-book (288 pages - 10.8MB) wrote by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner. I already read it! It's a very interesting book that you should take a look!

PART I - DATABASE ADMINISTRATION (by Ross Mistry)

1.   SQL Server 2012 Editions and Engine Enhancements
2.   High-Availability and Disaster-Recovery Enhancements
3.   Performance and Scalability
4.   Security Enhancements
5.   Programmability and Beyond-Relational Enhancements

PART II - BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT (by Stacia Misner)

6.   Integration Services (SSIS)
7.   Data Quality Services
8.   Master Data Services
9.   Analysis Services (SSAS) and PowerPivot
10. Reporting Services (SSRS)

And not forget… if you want a more specific book about SSIS 2012, don’t forget to buy the book I wrote and will be published during the next days.

BI Certifications - CBIP Material for the exam

Finally I got some time to write something more about CBIP certification.

First off all, don’t think this certification is the ticket for your next job. It’s just a motivation to let you learn more and improve your skills. Naturally that if you improve your skills, you have more conditions and recognition to get your BI job, but don’t think a certification by itself do it for you.  Relating to this certification, it's a way to TDWI makes money like all other certifications that exists around the world. But at least in this case, it seems more credible and more recognized than for example Microsoft certifications. Why? Just because there are a lot of “brain dumps” spread in the internet with exactly some questions of the real Microsoft exams. TDWI do a very good job on this field… although having a big number of question not aligned with the certification subject (like for example in ETL module) they are good and unique! The TDWI staff in Germany is also amazing and very kindly with you! See my experience there in 2009!

Now let’s go to the main reason to write this post! I’ve promised to the dozens of people that contacted me (almost since the post I wrote about CBIP experience in 2009) for help them on getting material guidance. For that reason here am I with the promised post! (Sorry for the late reply).

To make these exams, you should have minimal real-world, or at least huge academic experience, on the exam specialty that you’re thinking to get. If you have this pre-requisite then I think you should consider the suggestions I’m writing below.

Suggestion 01 - Examinations Guide

You MUST buy and read the CBIP Examinations Guide. This guide contains detailed exam outlines, reference reading lists, sample exam questions, and answer explanations for each exam included in the CBIP program. Testing software and practice timed exams are included with the guide. Taking the sample exams will identify areas where additional study and/or work experience may be necessary prior to testing. If you don’t have this examinations guide you will probably feel lost during the exam… And don’t forget that you don’t have too much time to think! The testing software is for sure crucial!

Suggestion 02 - Mandatory Books

You MUST buy and read the “Performance Dashboard” and “Successful Business Intelligence: Secrets to Making BI a Killer App” books! Why? The first, in addition to being a very interesting book, was written by the TDWI director at that time: Wayne Eckerson! And the second is a book that resumes the concept of BI in a simple and objective way. These two books are an investment that you should have! (And buy it… do not try to find illegal copies of this book on the internet… because doing so, you’ll not encourage authors to write more amazing contents like these ones). I should add that on these books, you will find several answers to some exam questions.

Now let’s go to remaining materials that although not mandatory, should be read at least some of the topics where exist some doubts. You probably don’t have time to read more books, but I also suggest several others in a previous post. Try also to get some information in the internet about the following topics: Dimensional Modeling (Techniques like Slowly Changing Dimension, Junk Dimension, Mini-Dimension, Outrigger, Role-Play Dimension… Fact table types: Transactional, Cumulative Snapshot, Periodic Snapshot, Factless and Factless Coverage), Data Warehousing architectures (Bus model, Hub and Spoke, Federated and Independent Data Marts), OLAP Architectures (MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP), Data Warehousing Methodologies (Both Kimball and Larissa Moss methodologies), Data Mining and make some research on terms like BPM, CRM, OLAP, ETL, BAM…
I hope this post helps you!
Regards,
Pedro

BI Award – SQL BI MVP Award 2012

Last Sunday, I received for the third year, the award from Microsoft for all participation on several communities and also for all contribution spreading to the world the Microsoft BI tools during 2011. These tools are in my opinion very robust, intuitive and with huge future! For that reason is a pleasure to work with.

Last year was the most hard for me… not only the book, but the full time job on BI with amazing projects on several interesting institutions. I hope to receive the award again next year and for that reason I’ll participate even more on communities and maybe write another book! I want to dedicated this award to:

- All blog visitors
- All the post-graduation students on BI from Universidade Portucalense (Porto) and ISCTE (MSIAD + MEI) (Lisboa) for all important feedback on the Microsoft tools and also the direct and indirect support they gave me during the last year

- To Dra. Maria José Trigueiros for all the magic words (You’re still alive in my life. I’ll never forget you!)
- To my family and my girlfriend for all the support they gave me!
- All those persons that believed in me, even more than myself

Thank you all! Regards.

BI Session – First Look to SSIS 2012

The day after...
The SQL Saturdays #115 that held in Portugal yesterday at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa was in my perspective a fantastic conference. The organization provided by the Portuguese SQL user group SQL Port, was absolutely amazing! Everything worked perfectly and all the small issues raised, were faster resolved by volunteers that has a common passion like me: the SQL Serer. Speaking on the some track of persons that I follow for some years, like Alan Mitchel, Rui Quintino and Andro Moreira was a big honor to me… also, having the room complete on a Saturday at 9h30 AM was a big surprise. I just want to mention a fact that made me a little disappointed… some submitted sessions was not approved and I’m absolutely sure that the conference would be even better with the speakers like Rui Romano, Tiago Moreiras and Tiago Rente. But I understand that it’s impossible to have all speakers in action.

I've submitted two sessions about SSIS 2012, but just one session was approved by the organization. It were understandable but forced me to summarize the two sessions in only one. I was a little fast presenting my session, because my main goal was to provide the first impact to SSIS 2012 and cover the most new features and improvements to the attendees. I think almost attendees got the overall vision about this new version and I have no doubts that they will now go into deep detail on the new features and improvements they think more usefully.

I've included below my session slides presentation that I hope you enjoy and can share some feedback with me. As I already wrote on this blog, I’m finishing the book on the SSIS 2012 version and I hope you could help me to continue writing on the future about subjects I love!

A special thanks to the organizers, master BI students, friends, colleagues an all the attendees who chose my session.

BI Conference – SQL Saturdays #115 Portugal 2012

Dear Friends,
Next Saturday I’ll present a session on SQL Saturdays Portugal! On this session I’ll show the first look to the SQL Integration Services 2012 based on my last 6 months experiences writing a book about it with my friend Reza Rad. We are currently writing the latest chapters and very excited with the updates made to this version. Some of those, are highlighted below:

Legacy and Project deployment Models
The deployment approach used in the previous version of SSIS is called Legacy Deployment Model and the new one is the Project Deployment Model. If the new approach (Project Deployment Model) is used, almost custom logging made in the legacy deployment mode (previous versions) doesn’t make more sense now. This new approach has an important new SSIS Catalog that automatically logs all package execution activity along with some built-in reports that provide a more intuitive perspective over log activity and performance

Change Data Capture (CDC) tasks and components
Change Data Capture (CDC) feature was included in SQL 2008 version and provides other possibility to detect change on data under a database. This version include a new CDC task and components to make the life easier for those persons that choose this approach to deal with changed data

SQL Server Data Tools
The old Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) does not exist anymore. Now is the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and has a very intuitive layout with new tasks and components design and is under the very interesting Visual Studio 2010 environment

Simple and important improvements
Several simple and important improvements were made. Some examples are the improvement on the variables toolbar, Undo & Redo capabilities, easier way to zoom and several other improvements

More new features
In addition to CDC task and components, I should highlight some other new features like: data flow column mapper, the expression task, package parameters, data quality services and several other very interesting features that I’ll highlight on the next weeks!

I hope to see you next Saturday on my session! More details about the conference could be shown here!
I’ll add the slide presentation soon here
Just to remember that the book I wrote with Reza is not on Pre-Order here! I hope to get feedback from you soon! :-)

BI Tool – SQL Server 2012 Released to Manufacturing

Today… I have one more reason to write here… Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2012 has released to manufacturing. Now it’s your turn to download and evaluate this new amazing version. Relating to SSIS 2012 I’ll write more often about it just because I passed the last 6 months investigating it through the SSIS book that I’m finishing with my friend Reza rad. For now, I want to highlight the following new updates:

Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools
Business Intelligence Development Studio known as BIDS there will not exist anymore. Now, the name is Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools. Take a look here.
Download SQL Server Data Tools

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2010
I thought Data Mining strategy had died, but has not yet! Fortunately Microsoft update the old Add-In to the new SQL 2012 and Excel 2010 versions. This package includes two add-ins for Microsoft Office Excel 2010 (Table Analysis Tools and Data Mining Client) and one add-in for Microsoft Office Visio 2010 (Data Mining Templates)
Download Data Mining Add-In

Today, don’t forget to attend the SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event, featuring keynotes by Ted Kummert and Quentin Clark and a number of video presentations about SQL Server 2012 by other SQL Server expert.

BI Book – SSIS 2012 Integration Services Book

I've never been so long without writing on the blog. The last months have been very complicated in terms of time, but I promise that I will not be so long time without writing! The main reason for such a long absence was undoubtedly the book I'm writing since September 2011! Yes…I’m writing a book and you know it now in first hand! This book is focused on the next version of SQL Integration Services (SSIS 2012 version) and is being written with my friend Reza Rad. This book is being reviewed by SSIS world reference professionals Phil Brammer and Rafael Salas that I need to thank for all the feedback they are giving to us!

The book is almost complete and has been an incredible challenge for me! It has been an authentic miracle working in a full-time job, teaching at the weekend and still has time to investigate and write a book! I want to thank all the effort that has been made also by Reza Rad (co-author), all reviewers, and especially PacktPub publisher staff. Thanks to Joana, my girlfriend, that always supported and motivated me to take this up until the end and never give up.
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services: An Expert Cookbook
Reza Rad, Pedro Perfeito

"SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a leading tool in the data warehouse industry - used for performing extraction, transformation, and load operations. This book is aligned with the most common methodology associated with SSIS known as Extract Transform and Load (ETL); ETL is responsible for the extraction of data from several sources, their cleansing, customization, and loading into a central repository normally called Data Warehouse or Data Mart.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services: An Expert Cookbook covers all the aspects of SSIS 2012 with lots of real-world scenarios to help readers understand usages of SSIS in every environment.

Written by two SQL Server MVPs who have in-depth knowledge of SSIS having worked with it for many years. This book starts by creating simple data transfer packages with wizards and illustrates how to create more complex data transfer packages, troubleshoot packages, make robust SSIS packages, and how to boost the performance of data consolidation with SSIS. It then covers data flow transformations and advanced transformations for data cleansing, fuzzy and term extraction in detail. The book then dives deep into making a dynamic package with the help of expressions and variables, and performance tuning and consideration"

Me and reza didn't wrote this book for money, but by the desire of writing about what we like to do. Help us continue to share knowledge with the comunity. The book is now in pre-order and will available soon in several places like Amazon, Lehmans and in the PacktPub Publisher Website

Order the Book NOW