2012 Review

It passed 3 months from the previous post and I need to say sorry to all you that follow my blog. For all the visitors, friends and more than 500 followers I want to explain that the previous year were the most important of my life and for that reason I failed writing here more often. I started the most important project of my life with the birth of my daugter Diana, wrote an entire book with my friend Reza and moved from Lisboa to Oporto to embrace a new challenge in a new company (BI4ALL) and stay near my family

The most important project of my life and the first smile:

The most amazing city of the world: Porto

The book

... and he company I currently work and the event I organized in Porto

I promise that I'll write more often! 
I have several projects in mind to share with you all.
Pedro

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 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 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

BI Book - SQL Server MVP Deep Dives - Volume 2

Dear friends,

I’m not writing for too much time... almost 2 months! Although we are on summer (usually time for vacations) I was working almost day and night! Yes… it’s true! Too many challenges and few much time to vacations or to write here some posts) One of the challenge was being a co-author of the MVP Deep Dives book (2nd Volume). The book is almost available for sell! See here more details from the chapter I wrote: “Excel as BI FrontEnd tool”.

Book Description

Individually, each SQL Server MVP possesses an impressive wealth of knowledge and skill. Collectively, the 63 MVPs who contributed to SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, Volume II represent over 1000 years of daily experience in SQL Server administration, development, training, and design. This incredible book captures this expertise and passion in a collection of sixty concise chapters, each handpicked by lead editor Kalen Delaney and section editors Louis Davidson, Greg Low, Brad McGehee, Paul Nielsen, Paul Randal, and Kimberly Tripp, and written by an active SQL Server MVP.

This second volume picks up where the first SQL Server MVP Deep Dives leaves off, offering completely new content on topics ranging from testing and policy management to integration services, reporting, and performance optimization techniques. The chapters fall into five parts, Architecture and Design, Administration, Database Development, Performance Tuning and Optimization, and Business Intelligence

About the Authors

This book includes contributions from 63 SQL Server MVPs. All chapters were selected and edited by Kalen Delaney and section editors Louis Davidson (Architecture and Design), Paul Randaland Kimberly Tripp (Database Administration), Brad McGehee (Performance Tuning), Paul Nielsen (Database Development), and Greg Low (Business Intelligence)

Your purchase supports Operation Smile

An international children's medical charity dedicated to healing cleft lip, cleft palate, and other facial deformities through safe and effective surgical care. Every donation can help change a life! Learn more at www.operationsmile.org

BI Book – Excel as BI Front-End Tool

I’m very happy to announce that finally I submit the chapter for the next MVP Deep Dives Book that I’m a co-author with some other MVP professionals around the world. The book will be published next October and for sure I’ll give you here more news about it.

The chapter I wrote, explains the construction of an Excel Dashboard from an IT and Business perspective in a retail sector scenario. It was not intended to explain the best way to create a dashboard for the retail sector, but to describe some tips and tricks for a low-cost dashboard using a familiar tool commonly implemented across organizations: Excel.

Excel 2010 seems to be the strongest candidate to be chosen as preferable tool. It's certainly true that Excel 2010 doesn't yet have the design features of some BI Front-End competitors, but the low cost and welcome acceptance from end users are big advantages to it. Naturally, there are huge commercial interests in favour of more robust solutions that generally stand by their promises, but in turn, the return on the investment (ROI) is the question.

The dashboard created along the chapter is shown in the previous figure. I highlight the fact that beyond this dashboard, information is centralized inside an OLAP cube, and the dashboard was created without any line of code! At one hand, you make IT department satisfied (because they still control data quality, data governance…) and at another hand, business has the freedom to create their own dashboards and reports not only through Excel 2010, but also through Report Builder 3.0.

All the money from the book sales will be donated to charity. And the organization selected by almost co-authors of this book is the Operation Smile. I hope you buy this book to learn new things but also to help to make the difference for these children! For those interested in doing more charity work, check out Social Work Degree.

I'll keep you informed about book published date!

BI Book – Free Data Quality and MDM SQL e-book

Well… here am I again with another free e-book… and this time a Data Quality (DQ) and master data management (MDM) book using SQL 2008 R2! The book was written by my MVP colleagues Dejan Sarka and Davide Mauri. It’s for sure an amazing book that you should not miss! I’ll start reading soon!

"This book deals with master data. It explains how we can recognize our master data. It stresses the importance of a good data model for data integrity. It shows how we can find areas of bad or suspicious data. It shows how we can proactively enforce better data quality and make an authoritative master data source through a specialized Master Data Management application. It also shows how we can tackle the problems with duplicate master data and the problems with identity mapping from different databases in order to create a unique representation of the master data.

For all the tasks mentioned in this book, we use the tools that are available in the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 suite. In order to achieve our goal—good quality of our data—nearly any part of the suite turns to be useful. This is not a beginner’s book. We, the authors, suppose that you, the readers, have quite good knowledge of SQL Server Database Engine, .NET, and other tools from the SQL Server suite.

Achieving good quality of your master data is not an easy task. We hope this book will help you with this task and serve you as a guide for practical work and as a reference manual whenever you have problems with master data"

Download link!

I hope you enjoy it!

BI Book - Free Business Intelligence e-book

Today I bring you a link for an interesting free e-book from Logica. This e-book doesn’t require any registration and I think you should take a look!

"Knowing that we address Business Intelligence (BI) experts with our mailing, there's no need to convinve you of the importance of monitoring and measurement of the performance of your organisation in times of uncertainty and economic downturn.

With our book "The BI Framework - How to turn information into a competitive asset" we introduce how BI can help to reach your business objectives. Knowing that most organisations already have BI solutions in place we focus on cost effective management of BI and provide you with a clear roadmap on how to lower the total cost of ownership of your current landscape"

Table of contents:
1. Introduction
2. Business Value of BI
3. Business Intelligence definition
4. Managing BI
5. BI Lifecycle
6. BI Solution Engineering
7. Best Practices
8. Ferrari Case Study

Download link
I hope you enjoy it!

BI Book - Reactive Business Intelligence

This book was for me one of the more original and interesting data mining books! It explains the several data mining tasks and techniques in a very intuitive and innovative way. It explain almost key points in the data mining field from the simple to complex topics. Even those persons that hate statistics and formulas will read and like this wonderful book. It has written in a “clean” language, with a lot of pictures that provides a better understanding about author’s message.

The book was written by the two persons of the picture above (R. Battiti and M. Brunato), and I truly suggest you to buy it. In the official book website, R. Battiti and M. Brunato added their description about it: “Reactive Business Intelligence is about integrating data mining, modeling and interactive visualization, into an end-to-end discovery and continuous innovation process powered by human and automated learning. This unifying goal requires collecting and integrating topics which are usually dissected into books dedicated to different areas” and also in the YouTube it’s possible to see a more personal description:

The concept of Reactive Business Intelligence introduced on the book is focused in four main areas: Data Mining, Models, Visualization and Feedback/Learning by software and people.

Throughout the book can be seen huge amount of intuitive pictures that support a fast learning, mainly in some topics often difficult to understand. Some examples can be seen in the official website, but I selected right now some of them for you:

Some points that I think could be improved/changed:

- Reduce the references to the visualization tool used (Grapheur) or add a new one more intuitive.

- More alignment between amazing book content to “real world” business cases

You can buy the book at official website!

I hope you enjoy it!

BI Books - Free SQL 2008 R2 eBook

Dear friends,
A very interesting free eBook was publish and shared by Microsoft Press. If you are a Database Administrator or a BI Developer, don’t forget to take a look to this book. You have no excuses… the book is FREE. Naturally the part of the book more interesting for me is undoubtedly the Business Intelligence chapters. Check the book structure:

PART I Database Administration
CHAPTER 1 SQL 2008 R2 Editions and Enhancements
CHAPTER 2 Multi-Server Administration
CHAPTER 3 Data-Tier Applications
CHAPTER 4 High Availability and Virtualization Enhancements
CHAPTER 5 Consolidation and Monitoring

PART II Business Intelligence Development
CHAPTER 6 Scalable Data Warehousing
CHAPTER 7 Master Data Services
CHAPTER 8 Complex Event Processing with Stream Insight
CHAPTER 9 Reporting Services Enhancements
CHAPTER 10 Self-Service Analyses with Power Pivot

More details about this book
Download the free SQL 2008 R2 eBook

Regards,
Pedro

BI Books - My Suggestions...

Following the request of many families :-), today I’m writing about my favorite books. In particular those I have read, those I'm reading right now, and those I’ll read soon relating to Business Intelligence world.

I have dozens or even hundreds of scanned or digital books, but there is nothing better and more motivating, than reading a book in the traditional format. All the books I have scanned into my computer, I never read them even after the print... the motivation is not the same and for that reason I always preferred to buy. The prices in Amazon website are cheap and even more, if you choose Amazon partner's stores. (In the images below you have each respective price attached)

The following books relate to the concept of Business Intelligence in general and how it fits with all its subsystems. The strategy, the processes, the people/knowledge and also something about the technological component. For those who follow the world certification in BI (CBIP), these books are essential for the examination in "Business Analytics":

              

The following books show the way to implement a successful Data Warehousing project. They were written by one of the greatest evangelists of Data Warehousing... (Ralph Kimball). These books focus on the dimensional modeling applied to multiple business scenarios and a complete life cycle that DW projects should follow. For those who follow the global certification in BI (CBIP), these books are essential for the examination of "Data Warehouse":

              

I also suggest more technical books which are more focused on Microsoft BI tools. These WROX books are very well structured, very easy to read and very helpful to understand better and fast. I’ll highlight the following books:

              

The following books are books very too simple and clearly explaining more deeply on what is behind this fantastic world of Data Mining:

              

Future purchases...
              

Currently Reading...
I am currently reading a book that promises to be very interesting. Not only by the positive feedback it has received, but also the important contribution of the author in TDWI/CBIP resources, that I’m always followed with great interest.

Keep tuned to this post because I'll be updating it with all the books I'm reading and some that have not put here yet! I hope I’ve helped you selecting your next book.

Regards, Pedro

BI Book - Free SQL 2008 Book

Dear Friends,

Only to alert you that Microsoft Press is sharing with comunity a free SQL 2008 book.

It's available for a free download here:
http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urss1q2we6

If you want to begin the SQL 2008 Microsoft Certifications, could be a good start... and free!

Regards!

Pedro

BI Certification – Microsoft MCTS 70-445 Exam Passed

Yes!!!
One of the goals that I’ve proposed to achieve this year is almost accomplished! Today I made the Microsoft exam 70-445 (MCTS), and next week I will do the exam 70-446 (MCITP).

The exam 70-445 that I done today includes 3 courses:
Course 2791: Implementing and Maintaining SQL 2005 Analysis Services (3 days)
Course 2792: Implementing and Maintaining SQL 2005 Integration Services (3 days)
Course 2793: Implementing and Maintaining SQL 2005 Reporting Services (3 days)
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exams/70-445.mspx

The following list includes the topic areas covered on this exam. The percentage indicates the portion of the exam that addresses a particular skill.

Managing SSAS (12 percent)
Developing SSAS Solutions by Using BIDS (18 percent)
Implementing data mining by Using BIDs (12 percent)
Managing SSRS (13 percent)Developing Reporting Solutions by Using SSRS (19 percent)
Developing Business Intelligence Solutions by Using SSIS (16 percent)
Administering SSIS Packages (11 percent)

The exam wasn’t easy, and I confess that during the exam I was a little afraid, because the questions were very specific and it required a lot of attention! Happily I passed with 842 (84,2%) (minimum is 700)
I have some experience in these subjects for that reason I only studied with MCTS Training Kit. This kit has a book, several labs and about 200 exams to train.

My exam had 44 questions and I felt that almost questions were focused on Reporting Services and Data Mining. I suggest that you get this training book and go inside into the properties of each module. (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and Data Mining) And some subjects that you must study hard:

Report Model and Report Builder
Data mining algorithms and parameters
Data Mining lift and profit chart (Check the accuracy of your DM Model)
SSIS Transactions
SSAS Security issues
SSAS Performance (Usage based optimization / design aggregations)
SSAS MOLAP (automatic and schedule), ROLAP and HOLAP
DMX Syntax (for data mining models)
SSRS Subreports

If you follow the training kit and focus on the tips above, and are familiar with Microsoft tools I think is sufficient to pass. But some visitors will ask... why SQL 2005 and not SQL 2008? Because SQL Exams is not available yet, and it’s a way to prepare to SQL 2008 and learn more about Microsoft tools. Following this, I already made my registration for the new exams that will be available this month.

(If you register now, you will have 40% discount in the exam price)

Register for the "First to Know" Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Exam Offer
Be Among the First to Certify
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/sqlvs/offer/default.mspx

Regards!!

Pedro

BI Education - The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit

Dear Friends,
I ‘m very busy with my job and my master BI degree, but I will try to come here with more frequently. I have too many things to blog and I don’t know where I will start from.

For now, I’ll write few words about the recent book of Ralph Kimball. I confess that I always was a fan of Kimball books, but normally those books have a lot of years. Although the subjects of almost the books are in use, I think that they was a little old and could be better adapted and integrated.

Ralph Kimball Group launched a new and fantastic book, “The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit” (second edition) on last January 2008. I read only four chapters yet, but I really feel that this book is better than others from Ralph Kimball Group. Check the contents of the book in the amazon or wiley website.

Obviously, I bought this book, and it has a fantastic price on Amazon (UK) at

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470149779/ref=nosim/schildnet0a I paid for the book about 18€ (Euro) with shipment included and received in 2 days!!! (I’m in Portugal… don’t forget it) Normally, I buy the books at Amazon directly to the Amazon partners because is more cheaply, but in this case there is no difference between Amazon official price and the partners price.

I’m preparing a post about Reporting Services 2005 and 2008 querying an OLTP database.
Regards!!

BI Conference - Andy Neely in Portugal (ISCTE University)

Dear Friends,
As I told you before my University ISCTE, where I'm current attending my BI master degree, is the best Portugal University in this subject, and not only for the master contents but also the excellent knowledge and experience of the teachers.

And to comprove it, next 22 January 2008, the ISCTE will organize a conference inviting Mr. Andy Neely. He is Deputy Director of the ESRC/EPSRC AIM Research Initiative, Professor of Operations Strategy and Performance at Cranfield School of Management, and Visiting Professor of Operations Management at London Business School.

He's the author of these books:
Business Performance Measurement
(March 2002)
http://www.amazon.com/Business-Performance-Measurement-Andy-Neely/dp/052180342X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199744561&sr=1-1

Getting the Measure of Your Business
(July 2002)
http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Performance-Getting-Measure-Business/dp/0521750318

Automating Your Scorecard: The Balanced Scorecard Software Report
(October 2003)
http://www.amazon.com/Automating-Your-Scorecard-Balanced-Software/dp/1891234102/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199745056&sr=1-4

Business Performance Measurement: Unifying Theory and Integrating Practice
(Only available next February 2008)
http://www.amazon.com/Business-Performance-Measurement-Unifying-Integrating/dp/052185511X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199744561&sr=1-3


For these and other reasons the conference promises! If you are in Portugal or close, the registrations are opened! Come here and enjoin it!!
Regards!