BI BLOG - News Update

Dear friends, It was so many time since the last time I wrote here. Basically, it was very difficult to get time to share and learn from all you. I’m currently being prepared to start a new challenge and be happy in other place. Time to time, a change is needed to refresh the mind and also enrich ourselves with new experiences and know new persons. Last week, I left my previous company. Although we have different perspectives and strategies about BI world, I should share with all you that it was a very good experience. I knew amazing persons, consolidate old friendships and will be follow up all their progress. Meantime, is time to calm down, learn, write, share, teach and keep on with my PhD on BI area. Right now, I can ensure with all you, that I’ll be writing more often here. This is my home… since 2007… It was 7 years since the first post! Keep in touch!

BIG DATA – Just one more buzzword?

I confess that I'm already tired of the buzzword Big Data! But as an invited lecture in several universities, I must motivate students to embrace new concepts to make them research and learn “new things”. But in my opinion it’s just a new buzzword, nothing more… is like Business Analytics or other buzzwords that BI vendors incorporate in their products and services to make the idea they are creating something new and different from the concurrency. Well… but I think we should take a look about what they purpose to at least can have an opinion about it. Maybe I’m wrong! For that reason, I invite you to join the BIG DATA event that will take place at one of the best universities in Portugal concerning to Business Intelligence and related buzzwords.

 

MSIAD - Agile DW and ETL design

It’s a big honor to have two amazing DW and ETL gurus in Portugal (Lawrence Corr and Joe Caserta). It’s for me the most important BI training ever done in Portugal. The price is higher but acceptable for attend several sessions provided by these two references. Concerning to Lawrence Corr, you should read the book we wrote… it’s the best book I ever read! Better than Kimball or Inmon. I’ll post my review of this book soon in my blog!! For now, stay with official description about the training that will take place at ISCTE (Lisboa).

The Lisbon BI Course is the first training in Portugal in Agile Data Warehouse Design and ETL with renowned experts in the field, Lawrence Corr and Joe Caserta. Lawrence and Joe usually teach these courses all over the world, including in TDWI events. This constitutes a unique opportunity to learn and exchange ideas in a friendly but intense environment. The Lisbon BI Course will take place at ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), located in the centre of Lisbon, in the University City Campus. This is a joint effort promoted by ISCTE-IUL, particularly its Master in Integrated Systems for Decision Support (MSIAD)

Lawrence Corr is the author of Agile Data Warehouse Design: Collaborative Dimensional Modeling, from Whiteboard to Star Schema. He is a leading data warehouse design specialist and highly experienced educator who has worked in Europe, USA, the Middle East and South Africa developing and reviewing data warehouses for healthcare, telecommunications, engineering, broadcasting, financial services and retail clients

Joe Caserta is the author of the best-selling book The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit, the de facto standard for building dimensional data warehouses. Joe offers more than 25 years of IT experience and over 15 years of delivering dimensional data warehouse solutions including experience in Higher Education. Joe delivers his published best practices in a way that encourages participants to immediately apply his techniques in real-life situations

BI Events - Oporto BizTalk Innovation Day

BizTalk Innovation Day is a one-day event focused purely on Microsoft BizTalk Server related topics that has been conducted in several major European cities since Feb 2011: Amsterdam (Netherland), Milan (Italy), and Stavanger (Norway). The last event took place in London and it was a huge success! It was fully sold out with 130 attendees from 16 different countries.

During this event participants will have an opportunity to hear about the new upcoming features in the BizTalk Server 2013 platform, integration strategies, private and public Cloud, and many more.

Join this five MVPs (Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals) and most active community members for a remarkable community event.

Read more here!

BI Paper - SSIS Extract Data Multiple Worksheets

Some time ago in 2009, I wrote several papers from a community that I created in that year. But after the community website broke, I received dozens of requests to provide the papers for those who didn’t downloaded it at that time. For that reason I have attached to this post the paper again for everyone.

Scenario
Every month a company receive customers data from an excel file to extract and load data into an enterprise data warehouse. In brief, is required to extract data from a single excel file with multiple worksheets with same schema into a single destination table in SQL server.

I hope this paper could be useful

DOWNLOAD PAPER HERE

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 Challenge – Moving to BI4ALL

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 and news on this amazing field!

Pedro

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 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