Download PDF Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 by Brian Larson

Sinopsis

Business Intelligence The first step in effective decision making is to set specific, measurable goals. Once these goals have been set, the objective is to get accurate, useful information to the appropriate decision makers to serve as a foundation for the decision and as feedback on the effectiveness of that decision. Having the foundation and feedback information available at the appropriate time is extremely important. The question becomes, How does an organization go about obtaining and distributing this information? As the title of this book suggests, the answer is, Through the use of business intelligence. In fact, this objective serves as our definition of business intelligence.

Definition Business intelligence is the delivery of accurate, useful information to the appropriate decision
makers within the necessary timeframe to support effective decision making.

Business intelligence is not simply facts and figures on a printed report or a computer screen. Rows upon rows of numbers showing detailed sales figures or production numbers may be extremely accurate, but they are not business intelligence until they are put in a format that can be easily understood by a decision maker who needs to use them. Concise summaries of customer satisfaction or assembly-line efficiency may be easily understood, but they are not business intelligence until they can be delivered in time to meaningfully affect daily decision making. We also discovered earlier in this chapter that effective decision making is important at all organizational levels. Timely foundation and feedback information is needed as part of that effective decision making. Therefore, we need to make business intelligence available throughout our organizations.

Content

1. Part I - Business Intelligence
2. Chapter 1 - Equipping the Organization for Effective Decision Making
3. Chapter 2 - Making the Most of What You've Got—Using Business Intelligence
4. Chapter 3 - Searching for the Source—The Source of Business Intelligence
5. Chapter 4 - One-Stop Shopping—The Unified Dimensional Model
6. Chapter 5 - First Steps—Beginning the Development of Business Intelligence
7. Part II - Defining Business Intelligence Structures
8. Chapter 6 - Building Foundations—Creating and Populating Data Marts
9. Chapter 7 - Fill'er Up—Using Integration Services for Populating Data Marts
10. Part III - Analyzing Cube Content
11. Chapter 8 - Cubism—Measures and Dimensions
12. Chapter 9 - Bells and Whistles—Special Features of OLAP Cubes
13. Chapter 10 - Writing a New Script—MDX Scripting
14. Chapter 11 - Pulling It Out and Building It Up—MDX Queries
15. Part IV - Mining
16. Chapter 12 - Panning for Gold—Introduction to Data Mining
17. Chapter 13 - Building the Mine—Working with the Data Mining Model
18. Chapter 14 - Spelunking—Exploration Using Data Mining
19. Part V - Delivering
20. Chapter 15 - On Report—Delivering Business Intelligence with Reporting Services
21. Chapter 16 - Let's Get Together—Integrating Olap with Your Applications
22. Chapter 17 - Another Point of View—Excel Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts

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