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 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 Seminar – MSIAD – BI new trends

It’s almost beginning the master degree entirely dedicated to Business Intelligence (BI) idealized by my main reference on BI: Dra Maria José Trigueiros that physically left us on year ago. This Master is held every two years and the season 2011-2013 will begin next October 2011. To formal present to the public this master, the ISCTE-IUL University in the person of Dr. Filipe Santos, decided to follow one of the Dra Maria Jose Trigueiros dream: A Business Intelligence seminar dedicated to the fourth edition of BI master! Wherever Dra Maria Jose Trigueiros is, I believe she is proud of this university and all the people that will make this dream come true.

If you are interested in BI and also were a Maria Jose Trigueiros student, I truly suggest you to be in ISCTE-IUL next Friday. BI demonstrations from DevScope (main Microsoft BI Portuguese partner), F5TCI (Qlickview) and SAS will be some of the amazing content that will be provided to you! Don’t miss this event!!!
Official website here

BI Article - Writing about BI in a Magazine

Today I accomplish one more important step in my professional evolution. Together with Drª Filomena Lopes (IT Director of Universidade Portucalense) I wrote an article for a Portuguese magazine about Business Intelligence. Naturally, this article is more interesting for Portuguese people than those that don’t have Portuguese as a mother or second language. But for those that don’t understand Portuguese don’t worry, because I was invited to write some stuff about BI in a english website... I’ll tell you more about it during this week.

Article published last week on "Semana Informatica" magazine.

I hope you enjoy this article.
Regards,
Pedro

BI Dissertation – MSIAD

Today I finally publish the presentation of my master BI dissertation, that I defended last year. I do it to share my perspective and experience with you, but mainly because I know that it was one thing that the teacher Maria Jose Trigueiros would want to see, if she was with us. For that reason, I’m also writing an article about this dissertation with my advisor, the teacher Drº Orlando Belo, in order to submit it internationally.

For now the presentation is in Portuguese, but I can easily translate it to English if I get some requests to do it. Unlike most of the master's students, I do not hide my dissertation and I share it with pleasure. I hope it could be helpful to you at least, to get some ideas.
Regards.

BI Certifications - CBIP/TDWI Certifications done!

I started writing this post on the return trip to Portugal. It was a very enriching and experience trip, which I reached one more objective I had in mind for more than two years. I passed the four exams and got the specialization in Business Analytics and Data Management provided by The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI - www.TDWI.org)

To whom I dedicate this achievement...I'd like to dedicate the achievement of this goal, besides of course my family and girlfriend who accompanied me on this trip to Germany, two very special persons. Firstly, to Mrs. Maria José Trigueiros for all messages and follow that gave me along the master. Secondly, to my master adviser Mr. Orlando Belo, who accompanied me on a daily basis during the dissertation. These two persons, directly and indirectly supported me in the last two years, and for sure without them, it would be difficult to maintain my motivation and strength to deepen my knowledge in this amazing world of Business Intelligence.

The exams…Relating to the exams, what I felt was that in fact, the level of difficulty is high and mainly because there is less than a minute to answer to each question. There are 110 questions to be answered in 90 minutes ... Each question has 4 possible answers, where two of them are usually very similar and can be confusing ... When the "mother" language is not English, is even more complicated because some questions and their answers are long.

Fortunately, I was lucky to begin with the apparently the less complicated exam to make, and it allowed me to understand the time management that should be looked at, in order to do other exams. To get an idea, in the first exam when I had only 5 minutes to finish, I had 20 questions to answer... it was an authentic stress and the last question was answered over the last second ... There's no time to think and go back to review the answers ... that is, or you known the answer and quickly respond to a question, or it will be better to go ahead to next question!

It is difficult to describe the best way to prepare for the exams ... Normally the scope of a normal exam it’s a well-defined scope and the issues are related to the context and usually reading a book or two is enough. But in CBIP/TDWI exams it is quite different... you need to have a real-world experience and read several (many) books. But for the preparation and bibliography to make the CBIP exams, I’ll prepare/describe in a future post.

I made and passed in four exams: Information Systems (core), Data Warehouse (core), Business Analytics and Data Management that turns me a specialized professional in Business Analytics and Data Management. The more complicated exam was the Information Systems which is too much technical and detailed.

TDWI Germany Centre...It all started at 8:00 in the morning of last Friday (06-Nov-2009)... in the TDWI Germany centre, located about 30 km’s from Cologne (Germany) where I was accommodated with my girlfriend Joana. The facilities of the centre are very good and the staff really fantastic, especially Simmone and Mr. Guenter Fuhrmeister, CEO of SIGS DATACOM (TDWI Partner) ... They both received me very well and they greatly reduced my stress caused by so many tests on the same day. In addition to all the sympathy and coffees, snacks, drinks, and others... they offered me an amazing book that I will start reading during this week, wrote by Frank Buytendijk. (Click on the book image to preview the book)



The Cologne city...Cologne (German: Köln) is Germany's fourth-largest city after Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, and is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than 10 million habitants. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Romans in the year 30 BC.
Cologne lies on the Rhine. The city's world famous Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Cologne. The University of Cologne (Universität zu Köln) is one of Europe's oldest universities and internationally renowned for its economics department.

(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne)

The party...At the end it was the party where my princess Joana was waiting for me at the in Cologne... we started enjoy this fabulous city with some of the advices given by Simone. We were focused mainly in the shopping area and near the Rhine river. It is a beautiful city with an intense movement of people not only in the shopping area, but also in the restaurants and bars area. We attend, almost every day, to a Cuban bar where we drank exotic drinks as capiroska, mojito and others!


My sensation is that I’ll return to Germany to take the other CBIP specializations very soon... I hope this post was helpful to you.

Regards,

Pedro

BI Certifications - Microsoft Certification Discounts

It’s show time!!!… Now is a great time to take Microsoft certification programs. Microsoft announces that will be offering until the final of this year a discount up to 25%, in their exams. There are two certification Microsoft paths in Business Intelligence area, the MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) and MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) that are under discount… don’t hesitate… schedule right now the exam through this link
I’ll do the SQL 2008 exams in the first week of November 2009… join me!

Certification on SQL 2005 version

Exam 70-445 (MCTS BI)

Exam 70-445 + Exam 70-446 (MCITP BI)

Certification on SQL 2008 version

Exam 70-448 (MCTS BI)

Exam 70-448 + Exam 70-452 (MCITP BI)

Regards,

Pedro

BI Training - Free remote BI Sessions

This month is being hard for me because I’m writing my master thesis… and the deadline is in the final of this month… and for that reason I’m not writing so often. Almost two and a half years writing in this blog and there's a new idea... in addition to send my BI messages/opinions through writing, I'm thinking to contact via video/audio with all you that visit this blog and make it alive with all the comments and suggestions. At the moment I’m only formalize the intention and hoping to receive feedback for all you.

In brief I’m describing below the session plan:
What?

Business Intelligence training focused on learning the concepts and using the Microsoft tools that are more flexible than other players in the market.

Why?

To share knowledge, make new friends and also to train my oral english language.

Who?

For all the persons that usually visit and support this blog with comments and sugestions. (For portuguese people I’ll prepare soon a on-site training)

When?

I will try to do it on October or November of this year 2009 after finishing the master BI thesis and after the 20h00 (Portuguese time... because I have a job…)

How much?

Free

How attend?

Through Office Live Meeting that you can use to engage audiences in online meetings, training, and events. I need to make some tests to this software, even appoint a date for testing it with all the registered users.

Registration?

In order to know the number of interested users, please fill the registration form in the link below. (The number of users are limited)

Registration form

I’ll be waiting for you.

BI Education - BI Graduations in Portugal

Today I will talk about two universities that marked me a lot and currently are betting strong in the Business Intelligence area... These two universities are located in two different cities and separated by 300 km between Porto (North) and Lisbon (South). The reason for this post is not only because they are the main universities in Portugal going in deep Business Intelligence area, but also the contribution they gave me all my life since 1995.

I have great affection towards these two institutions, both have a very important role in my personal and professional development. At “Universidade Portucalense” (UPT) I finished my degree in 2001 while in the “Instituto Universitario de Lisboa” (ISCTE-IUL) I am currently finishing my dissertation included in my master BI degree began in 2007.

UPT – Universidade Portucalense

The UPT prepared me for life with its entire rigor, exigency and the indescribable quality of the teachers. In this University nothing failed ... everything worked ... I dare to say that this university has the better organization and installations.
I was at the age of responses to WHY… Why I need to study? Why I need to learn some contents? Why…Why…?

ISCTE-IUL – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

The ISCTE-IUL helped me to improve my skills and to be more organized, more focused on the benefits and objectives to be achieved. Also helped me to understand the others and myself.

I was at the age of responses to HOW… How can I be a better Professional? How can I do the things more efficiently? How…? How…?

In UPT time the contact to the teachers was very difficult… otherwise today you can catch them by email or by mobile… It’s the evolution… The old and current students should be proud of these two universities that after so many years are still here helping us to be better professionals.

If you want to improve your competencies or start a new path, the registrations for business intelligence graduations are open. Visit the universities websites:

TDWI - The importance of BI Standards

As you have noticed from previous posts, I appreciate a lot all the work that is being doing by TDWI ... not only for their great organization but also for its importance in the creation of standards that everyone can follow and speak the same "language". As I have already said earlier, I am currently preparing for the global certification of TDWI Business Intelligence in Germany ... when I feel prepared I take a flight and go to Germany and make the exams… of course with my princess because Business Intelligence only makes sense to me with the unconditional support of my princess Joana.

But not moving too much from the main reason of this post, I want to share with you some interesting posters from TDWI that you should print. Attention… follow this mind map or other posters from TDWI but not be a fundamentalist… you don’t need to follow all this approaches in details, because each project is different and the requirements as well.

TDWI's BI Usability poster visualizes all the elements that contribute to making a BI solution "usable." The mind map clusters the attributes into four categories, each of which has multiple branches that support related attributes. The four categories of usability are: Change Management, Architecture, Support and Analysis/Design.

The poster also depicts the dynamics of BI growth and decline using a model from systems theory. The model shows that usability is one of several key leverage points that BI managers can use to alter systems dynamics and move a program from a negative reinforcing loop to a positive one.

Request your free copy

Also take a look to other posters from TDWI:

Master Data Management

Business Intelligence Maturity Model

Regards,

Pedro

BI Conference - SQL Bits IV and Rafal Lukawiecki

SQL Bits IV

SQL Bits IV is coming… and this time it will be in Manchester, 28 of March…Unfortunately, I will not go to Manchester because I will have to expose my master BI dissertation on the day before (27th of March), but I will attend to it on-line!

My friend Tomislav Piasevoli will be responsible for the session “Universal calculated measures in MDX queries”… I will try to purpose one session in the next event... maybe about my master BI dissertation.

Rafal Lukawiecki

Microsoft are hosting a one-day seminar presented by Rafal Lukawiecki for IT Managers and BI practitioners wanting to improve decision making and getting the valuable business insight by using Microsoft solutions at the Microsoft Offices in London and Lisbon. As I told before in this blog, Rafal is the best communicator of the world, if you are near Lisbon or London, you cannot miss it.

In Lisbon (Portugal), March 24th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402504&Culture=pt-PT

In London (UK), March 26th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032403569&Culture=en-GB

Regards,

Pedro

BI Education - Master's Degree Business Intelligence

I was contacted by dozens of people about information’s on Master's Degree in Business Intelligence and for that reason I share with you a research in this area. The world is currently in recession and nothing is more important to be on the top and improve each day your skills and keep in touch with new technologies and new concepts.

In my case, the master degree on BI started on September/07 changed my life and created a rhythm of work that I was not prepared before it. I’m now prepared to attack on several fronts: on my daily work and several projects in my free time (experts-Exchange, MSDN, my blog, and 2 other projects that I will share with you later)

Many of us are tools oriented but there’s nothing more important than understanding the theory and the work which is already done by others (because we don’t want to invent the wheel again). Everything that arises, arises from something and is where I focus my goals.

Samuel Quintanilla Galvez is from Peru, and he did a research about masters in Business Intelligence and decided to share it with us. We hope this information could be usefully for all who loves BI like me and Samuel.

Samuel on first person: “I did a research about BI and DWH courses too (courses not related to any particular tool or provider), courses that I could take from here, Peru. Some of them are in-classroom, but others are online, and could be very useful for you or maybe your friends. Attach the result of my research. I'll probably take the "Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Specialized Studies Program" in the University of California, Irvine

(http://unex.uci.edu/certificates/it/data_warehousing).

The program can be taken online or on campus, and cost $2,270. I think it's a very attractive program, but I might be wrong, that is why I'm looking for opinions from experts or from people with much more experience than me, before enroll to the program..."

Alex Whittles is currently attending the master BI degree at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), and I hope he could give us some feedback about. No Alex?! ehehe
For whom that wants to see the excel file (I don’t know how to attach here) please send me an email.
Regards,

Pedro

BI Conference - SAS Forum 2008 - Special Session

SAS conference took place two weeks ago, but only today I finally got sometime to dedicate this post to my master BI colleagues Fernanda Romão, João Guerreiro, Paulo Batista e Pedro Cardoso.

They presented a BI session in SAS forum 2008 with very high quality. They apply data mining techniques on predicting European funds that must be assigned into educational purposes investments.

They are excellent master colleagues and very good friends. They deserve all the best and the opportunities to prove their high level skills. Below I show you some photos that I took to them!

Regards!

Pedro

BI Future - The coolest demo in the history of BI

Dear Friends,
The session about BI Future that tokeplace in Business Intelligence World conference in Seattle, was really amazing. Follow the link and check the Kristina Keer demo... I hope to be here when this come true...

Although this technology is somewhat futuristic you can quickly begin to see the value and intuitiveness of combining data in a highly visual and interactive context.

Ping back from:
http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/default.aspx

Regards!

BI Education - ExpertExchange Guru Certification

Experts Exchange has about 90.000 members around the world, and is currently the best place to share knowledge with the comunity.

In the overall I’m in 1908 position…

Yesterday, it was another important day in my career, I finally achieve the Guru certification on SQL Server 2005 zone. It was six months since my first certification answering questions regarding Business Intelligence issues with Microsoft Tools. (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, MDX…)

As I told you before, there are 9 different ranks that you could achieve, I’m now in the 7º rank, but I will try to achieve the higher… maybe I will wait some years but I will try!

I knew some fantastic people in Experts Exchange (EE) website, and I found some weeks ago, two Portuguese guys that are also answering questions but in .Net development zones. For each certification, EE will send you a t-shirt as a gift…

Join us in this world!