BI Tools - SQL Denali CTP3 Released

Microsoft announced today in the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference the release of the Community Technical Preview (CTP 3) of Microsoft SQL Server Code Name “Denali”! I’m really very excited to install and check all the new BI features that I have at very high expectations! The world is moving fast and I hope that all you can stay connected with the future!!!

Take a look to the keynote presented by Satya Nadell (President of Server and Tools Business Group) to see all the news about Microsoft products, best partners and strategy for the next year

More details here
SQL "Denali" CTP3 Download

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 Tools - Cumulative Update #8 for SQL 2008 R2

Dear Friends,
Just to inform you that a new cumulative update was released today! If you use SQL 2008 R2 version don´t forget to update it with these new fixes.

Take a look a the full details here:
CU#8 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2534352

Previous Cumulative Update KB Articles:
CU#7 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2507770
CU#6 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2489376
CU#5 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2438347
CU#4 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2345451
CU#3 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2261464
CU#2 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2072493
CU#1 KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981355

Follow all Microsoft SQL Server Release Services here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices

BI Blog - Four Years Blogging - Thank You!

Four years blogging! For me it’s simple amazing!
I started this challenge 4 years ago (May 2007) when few people known what a blog is! I always kept in mind that this place is just for write about BI and never to make money with banners with commercial purposes. My goal was always to spread BI world and never disappoint you with other intentions like earning money with this.

Almost 100.000 page views for a blog without adult content or illegal download links, it’s for me absolutely positive. I know that there are several points to review and improve, but it’s all about stop for a while and decide to focus on it.

Naturally without the support of special persons, I couldn’t arrive here. I highlight the following important persons, who directly or indirectly make this blog still alive:
- The ISCTE students from MSIAD and MEI master degrees classes
- The UPT students from post-graduate BI classes (1º and 2º Editions)
- The Ensiguarda students from MBA classes
- My dear teacher Maria José Trigueiros
- All the persons that believed in me and always encouraged me to continue on this challenge
- All blog visitors!!

Some numbers...

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This place will continue to be a meeting point for all those persons that have the same passion as me for Business Intelligence.

THANK YOU ALL
I promise you that I’ll never stop

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 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 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.