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 Event - SQL Saturday Portugal

The SQL Saturday, owned by the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), is organizing for the first time outside USA, an SQL event here in Portugal! The SQL Saturday goal, is to provide the tools and knowledge to groups and event leaders that need to organize and host, a free day of training for SQL Server professionals. This SQL event will be realized all day, and will take place next 15-April at the Microsoft Portugal auditorium. It’s for sure a very interesting event, mainly for those professionals in the SQL DBA and DEV fields.

The session’s schedules are the following:
09:00 AM Niko Neugebauer
SQL Server Denali CTP1 and more
10:15 AM Nuno Godinho
SQL Azure Overview - How to Develop and Manage it
11:30 AM Ramesh Meyyappan
SAP/SQL Server - Software Integration at its best!
01:30 PM Artur Santos
Optimizing SQL Server for Sharepoint 2010
02:45 PM Scott Stauffer++
SSIS: Overcoming Common Challenges
04:00 PM Pedro Rosa
Introduction to SQL Azure Reporting?
05:15 PM Ramesh Meyyappan
SQL Server Performance Monitoring and Tuning

Click here to Register

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 Videos - SQL Server Denali Videos‏

Today I paste some very interesting SQL Server videos links for you... not only for BI professionals, but also SQL DBA's and DEV's. I hope you enjoy them!

The videos and links could be found below:

Upgrade Your Database (Denali)
Data Programmability Tools (Denali)
SQL Server appliance (Denali & R2)
Parallel Data Warehouse (R2)
SQL Server virtualization (Denali & R2)
SQL Server security (Denali)
SQL Server AlwaysOn (Denali)
SQL Server backup compression (R2)
SQL Server Integration Services (Denali)
SQL Server Non-Relational (Denali)
SQL Server CLR (Denali)
SQL Server Data Compression (R2)
SQL Server Manageability (Denali & R2)

BI Conference - Microsoft Portugal 2011

Microsoft is organizing a conference only about BI here in Portugal… I have no doubts that will be an amazing conference! It's a big surprise a Microsoft conference focused only in BI…

There are 3 tracks…
Track 01 – IT Decision makers
Track 02 – Deep Dive em Microsoft BI
Track 03 – Microsoft BI Ramp-Up

If you are in Portugal you cannot miss this conference next 25 March!!
It’s a free conference! Registration can be done here

BI News – Donald Farmer Left Microsoft

Today I received the notice that Donald Farmer, one of the main business intelligence (BI) minds left Microsoft. Even yesterday I was writing about him on the predixion post and I had no idea what happened today… And imagine to where? To QlickTech…

I do not understand how Microsoft let their main BI reference Donald Farmer goes to the main concurrent of PowerPivot: Qlickview. Last year, Donald Farmer was defending his perspective of PowerPivot product agains Qlickview… now his in that side… what a great loss!

What can we think right now? Some question that we can do: Will Microsoft BI strategy follow Data mining Strategy? (Silenced) Why Donald Farmer left Microsoft? Exactly because there is a change on BI strategic? It’s the end of the line in Microsoft BI?

Read the entire Donald Farmer perspective through his blog in first person here.
Just some paragraphs here:

“When I joined Microsoft in 2001, the Analysis Services team was then about 50 people, and was the largest organization I had ever worked in. Along with Reporting Services, and later Integration Services, the BI org was an exceptional team including some of the smartest, most driven, and most amiable people I know. (Some were all three!)
…
So, where am I going? I am joining QlikTech, creating a role as the Product Advocate for QlikView. In my next post, early next week, I’ll write more, from QlikTech HQ. I look forward to telling you more about this role and what promises to be a thrilling new direction for me with the most exciting company I have seen in years"

Some Donald Farmer references in this blog during last years:

BI Interview – Donald Farmer BI Perspective
Yes we can!...see Donald Farmer in Portugal!
BI Webminar - Free Data Mining Webinar

I wish you the best luck in your new challenge.

Pedro

BI Webminar - Free Data Mining Webinar

If you are curious to know more about Data Mining and you use Excel as one of your favorite tools, I truly suggest you to assist at the Predixion Webminar that will take place next 11th January. Microsoft changed the strategy concerning to the Data Mining, and it was perceptible not only by the new position of Donald Farmer at PowerPivot team, but also after the main Microsoft team elements abandoned Microsoft Data Mining team on 2009. These elements created a new and amazing company named Predixion. I truly believe on determination and capabilities of the main founders of this company since the first time (like Jamie MacLennan an Simon) and it’s an honor to be a Beta tester of their fantastic Data Mining Product since the beginning.

The main and big improvements comparing to MSFT Data Mining Add-In:

- The amazing design
- The easy and flexibility to manage the models done with Predixion
- The huge performance (mainly because their cloud plataform)
- No cost-prohibitive software license fees
- The possibility to use PowerPivot dataset as source that support the process of millions of rows in seconds
- Connectivity with SAS and SPSS (world leaders) through PMML language
- (…)

Even Microsoft recognizes today the importance of Prexition in the Data Mining field and also as a Microsoft partner. Donald Farmer (He was the Microsoft Data Mining team responsible and now he’s the Microsoft PowerPivot responsible) assume that with this opinion:

"Many businesses have ambitions to use predictive analytics to improve their practices and intelligence. Until now, such projects have often been shelved because current tools were either too difficult or limited to the desktop. Now, we see an alternative – Predixion Software.

Predixion Insight’s deep integration with SQL Server Data Mining brings analytic power; the integration with Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel brings flexibility for end users to prepare almost limitless data for analysis, and their business model makes experimentation and incremental deployments practical and attractive. The result is a truly agile, yet potent, solution for predictive analytics.” Donald Farmer, Microsoft Corporation

Take a look into Predixion Corporate video on the YouTube:

Predictive analytics and data mining are now available to business intelligence experts everywhere with Predixion's cloud-based predictive analytics software. Predixion brings affordable, sophisticated predictive analytics to Microsoft Excel and PowerPivot.
Do not miss the Predixion Webminar!

You will learn on this webminar:
- What exactly is Predictive Analytics & who needs it.
- Where & how Predictive Analytics is being used.
- What Predictive Analytics can do for your bottom line.
- How to get started using Predixion insight

I’m preparing a post to show you into deep detail, how it's easy to create a Data Mining model through Excel using Predixion tool. If you want know more about Data Mining and the session I presented last year at Microsoft TechDays 2010, follow this link

BI Seminar - Microstrategy BI Tools

Last Friday, I invited the "Microstrategy" to present a session based on their BI tools, to students from two different master degrees classes and also some BI passionate friends.
I confess that I didn’t have a very a good opinion about Microstrategy. But since some months ago, I surrendered to their products quality not for my own experience with the tools, but mainly by the market opinion and for the amazing staff that Microstrategy Portugal currently has.

Related to market opinion, Microstrategy is for Gartner, one of the world BI leaders. Mainly after this session, I truly believe on it, but BI is more than that… there is a huge work that BI should do to became a successful system. And because we are talking about tools... an ETL tool to extract, transform and load operational data into BI system is a critical step where almost projects in average spend 70% of the time. A BI system has a huge pillar on technology, but is required to be aligned with strategy, with business processes and with the people which almost the times resist to the change.

Related to the Microstrategy Portuguese staff, they are very kindly and always available to be in touch with the master degrees that I collaborate as assistant teacher. They are amazing and I’m sure that they make the difference in an increasingly competitive BI world.

The session was very interesting and concerning to the Microstrategy tools I highlight the big flexibility to create a dashboard, and also the huge performance that seemed to have! Also the dashboard showed directly in IPAD was wonderful!

The feedback from the audience was very positive... I highlight the following:

Take a look at this video to better imagine what was included on this seminar

Thanks again to Daniel and Carla from Microstrategy Portugal!

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