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 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 Award – SQL BI MVP Award 2011

Yesterday, I received the email from Microsoft with MVP Award related for all my contribution in the last year. It’s an honor to be again in the restricted group of those persons that spend huge time in what they believe and has passionate.

I have some projects related with this award that I’ll write here very soon. But for now, I want to thank primarily to my princess Joana that is always by my side and to my family. Some special thanks to all direct and indirect support from:

- All blog visitors
- All the post-graduation students on BI from Universidade Portucalense (Porto)
- All the master graduation students on BI from ISCTE (MSIAD + MEI) (Lisboa)
- Dra. Maria José Trigueiros for all the magic words (She’s still alive in my life)
- All those persons that believed in me, even more than myself

Thank you all! Regards.

BI Conference - Microsoft Portugal 2011 (day after)

Yesterday I attended the Microsoft BI Conference that took place here in Portugal. It was the first time that Microsoft organize a big and vertical conference focus specifically only in Business Intelligence. The advantage of this kind of focused event is that the attendees know exactly where they go and also is more easy to get support from Microsoft BI partners that could implement some interesting initiatives like show what they has being done in BI, but also to get the contacts of potential future customers and also employees. 700 attendees are a signal that Microsoft BI Tools and “BI world” have been gaining more confidence and support from the community. A special reference for my BI students from ISCTE (Lisbon) and also from UPT (Porto 300 kms distance) that were attending the event! This is just one more step on their interest on BI World… I hope they enjoyed it!

But because this is the first big BI event with 3 parallel tracks, naturally that has some contents that not fit at all in some group of attendees. Almost the sessions was too soft for Microsoft BI professionals, but was amazing for those people that were seeing Microsoft BI capabilities for the first time. Naturally this kind of event has a commercial purpose that allowed being a free event. So… a free event with a very good speakers and also with an amazing organization from Microsoft staff… what we can expect more?! I believe these kind of vertical/focused events are here to stay. And I hope to finally see an academic track where the BI students around Portugal could show their projects based on Microsoft amazing BI tools. And also we want to see more Portuguese speakers like Bruno Cortes that was planned to present at the beginning, but for some reason his session was canceled. There are huge potential in BI here in Portugal that Microsoft in my perspective should invest. What about the several conference partners? Just one Portuguese partner presents a session? This makes any sense? For me naturally not!

It was amazing to speak personally with Albert Ferrari that is one of my references since some many years. If you want to follow one of the discussions I had with him in SQL BI methodology click here. I confess that I don’t believe too much in Microsoft Power Pivot Excel Add-in (One of the main key areas of Albert Ferrari and also Marco Russo), but after speak for a while with Albert, he convinced me with some new features that I didn’t know. I am an advocate of a single repository of data, and create more “islands” of information scares me! I know that Power Pivot has huge performance, I know that could be amazing for a prototype, but I also know, Microsoft is interested in these islands (Office is a key area) and in a more realistic scenarios cannot be created by end-users, because they need to know a new query language (DAX)… If Integrated with Sharepoint I truly believe that could resolve some issues, even because the amazing Sharepoint design/layout could easily create a new end users habits that in spite of going to file system looking for their excel files, maybe start looking in Sharepoint that centralize them… Congratulations for all your sessions! Nice so see you here!


The Facilities and organization
Relating to the facilities and all organization, I just need to thank to João Bilhim e Miguel Vicente for all the amazing work they done on this event. They always give 200% to make these initiatives come true. On my side as a BI passionate I want to thank all the efforts done.


The Tagetik Session
In spite of their very good speaker’s performance, I was expecting a bit more about Tagetik tools. It was more a Sharepoint integration than a Tagetik session… for those that saw Sharepoint for the first time I imagine that it was amazing… but for those not, I think they was little disappointed because they have not seen the huge promise of Tagetik capabilities. Maybe in a next opportunity… but thanks for the speakers that made a very good session!


One day in a decision maker life session
The session was promising a lot… and despite almost attendees not having learned anything new, it was a funny and cool session… Basically, Sergio Ferreira (Microsoft) was telling us a history about BI (in Sergio BI perspective) and about how he deal with 400 new email messages every day and about the 1.200 meetings he has per month! He showed a power pivot excel file that reads data from outlook… It was a different session more focused on convinces business users, that they can do more with less effort. I think he made it well!


The Maciej Pilecki Sessions
Usually the speaker that comes from Project Botticelli Company is Rafal… See here my posts about this amazing speaker. Unfortunately he didn't come this time and Maciej Pilecki replaced him. Maciej is also a huge speaker, but the topics was very simple and generic and already included in previous Rafal events on Portugal. But for those who never had the opportunity to see Rafal sessions and are beginning a BI career, I don’t have any doubt they were convinced about Microsoft BI tools capabilities. Congratulations to Maciej!


The Alejandro Leguizamo session
Alejandro is Spanish and my MVP colleague. It was the first time I saw a session presented by him, and truly loved! He made a very good job in his session about “Designing scalable and complex Analysis Service Cubes”… it was for more advanced and tech users, and fits more in those people that already work with SSAS. Unfortunately I didn’t speak in person with Alejandro, because I left his session before the end, and I never found him again around the conference location. Congratulations Alejandro! Nice to see you here in Portugal!


More conferences like this one is desirable for sure!

BI Tools – Microsoft Project Crescent

During the PASS Summit, Microsoft announced the launch of the community technology preview (CTP) of SQL Server 11, codename “Denali”. Unfortunately, this version doesn’t have yet almost BI functionalities promised by Microsoft. Only at the end of 2011 these functionalities will be available to try!

But for now, I’m very excited to see codenamed Project “Crescent” (entirely developed on Silverlight) available to try and test! Microsoft already have cool BI front-end tools, although it’s required a tool that gathers all the functionalities dispersed by these several tools in only one. Right now, we can explore information inside a Data Warehouse or OLAP Database, through very good tools like: Excel, Visio, Report Builder, Reporting Services, Power Pivot (Excel Add-in)… but Project Crescent is a hope that an amazing visualizing world is coming soon… I hope not be disappointed, but on 2011 we all see and prove!


If you want to download the SQL Server Denali CTP, follow this link

Regards, Pedro