The comprehensive integration, analysis, and reporting capabilities of SQL Server 2005 enable companies to extend the value of their existing applications, regardless of the underlying platform. BI features include enhancements in the following areas:
• An end-to-end integrated business intelligence platform
• Integration Services
• Analysis Services
• Reporting Services
• Integration with the Microsoft Office System
End-to-End Integrated Business Intelligence Platform
SQL Server 2005 is a complete BI platform that provides the features, tools, and functionality to build both classic and innovative kinds of analytical applications. The following information introduces the tools that you will use to build an analytical application, and highlights new functionality that makes it easier than ever to build and manage complex BI systems.The SQL Server 2005 BI toolset delivers end-to-end BI application integration:
• Design. Business Intelligence Development Studio is the first integrated development environment designed for the BI developer. Built on Visual Studio 2005, Business Intelligence Development Studio delivers a rich, integrated, professional development platform for BI system developers. Debugging, source control, and script and code development are available for all components of the BI platform.
• Integrate. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been rewritten to perform complex data integration, transformation, and synthesis at high speed for very large data volumes. Business Intelligence Development Studio makes building and debugging packages positively fun. Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services work together to present a seamless view of data from heterogeneous sources.
• Analyze. Microsoft Data Mining has always been easy to use. Now it is even better with the addition of important new algorithms, including Association Rules, Time Series, Regression Trees, Sequence Clustering, Neural Network, and Naïve Bayes. SQL Server 2005 blurs the lines between relational and multidimensional databases. You can store data in the relational database, in the multidimensional database, or use the new Proactive Cache feature to get the best of both worlds. Important new analytical capabilities have been added to Analysis Services cubes as well; these include key performance indicator (KPI) framework, MDX scripts, and other built-in advanced business analytics. The Reporting Services report delivery and management framework enables easy distribution of complex analytics to the widest possible audience.
• Report. Reporting Services extends the Microsoft BI platform to reach the business user who needs to consume the analysis. Reporting Services is an enterprise-managed reporting environment, embedded and managed through Web services. Reports can be personalized and delivered in a variety of formats, with a range of interactivity and printing options. Complex analyses can reach a broad audience through the distribution of reports as a data source for downstream BI. New with SQL Server 2005 is the reporting tool, Report Builder.
• Manage. SQL Server Management Studio integrates the management of all SQL Server 2005 components. BI practitioners will benefit from this extension of the server abilities you expect from the relational engine—scalability, reliability, availability, programmability, and so on—to the full set of BI platform components.
Integration Services:SQL Server 2005 includes a redesigned enterprise data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) platform, called SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). SSIS enables organizations to more easily integrate and analyze data from multiple heterogeneous information sources. By analyzing data across an array of operational systems, organizations may gain a competitive edge through a holistic understanding of their business.
Enterprise ETL Platform:This new platform is the successor to the popular feature in SQL Server 2000 called Data Transformation Services (DTS). SSIS is completely new for SQL Server 2005. SSIS provides the breadth of features and very high-scale performance that is necessary to build enterprise-class ETL applications. SSIS is fully programmable, embeddable, and extensible—characteristics that make it an ideal ETL platform.
Beyond Traditional ETL:SQL Server 2005 supports nontraditional data (Web Services, XML) out of the box, in the following ways:
• SSIS brings analytics to the data without persisting the data.
• Data mining and text mining can be done in the data flow.
• Data mining and analytics are brought to the data flow for data quality and data cleansing.
Analysis Services:With SQL Server 2005, Analysis Services provides, for the first time, a unified and integrated view of all your business data as the foundation for your traditional reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, and data mining.
Unified Dimensional Model:By combining the best aspects of traditional OLAP analysis and relational reporting, Analysis Services provides a metadata model that covers both sets of needs. A set of cubes and dimensions defined in Analysis Services is referred to as a Unified Dimensional Model (UDM). The UDM is a central metadata repository defining business entities, business logic, calculations, and metrics that serves as the source for all reports, spreadsheets, OLAP browsers, KPIs, and analytical applications.
Using the powerful new Data Source View feature, the UDM is mapped to a host of heterogeneous back-end data sources, providing a complete and integrated picture of the business regardless of the location of the data.With the UDM's friendly descriptions of the business entities, navigation hierarchies, multiple perspectives, and even automatic translations to native languages, users will find it easy to explore the corporate business data.
Data Mining:-SQL Server 2005 Data Mining is the BI technology that helps you build complex analytical models, and integrate those models with your business operations. Analysis Services establishes new ground for data mining. By creating an easy-to-use, extensible, accessible, and flexible platform, Analysis Services data mining capabilities introduce data mining to organizations that previously would never have considered a data mining solution.
Through enterprise-class architecture, a deep integration with the SQL Server family of BI tools, and a rich set of other tools, APIs, and algorithms, SQL Server enables the creation of a new breed of intelligent applications that enhance productivity, increase profits, and reduce costs by providing customized data-driven solutions to a broad range of business problems.
Reporting Services:Reporting Services extends the Microsoft BI platform to reach the information worker who needs access to business data. Reporting Services is a server-based enterprise reporting environment, managed through Web services. Reports can be delivered in a variety of formats, with a range of interactivity and printing options. Complex analyses can reach a broad audience through the distribution of reports as a data source for downstream BI.
As an integrated component of SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services provides the following:
• A high-performance engine for processing and formatting reports.
• A complete set of tools for creating, managing, and viewing reports.
• An extensible architecture and open interfaces for embedding reports or integrating reporting solutions in diverse IT environments.
Relational and OLAP Reports:Reports built on relational data are useful but the ability to add additional analytic capabilities makes such reporting powerful. Reporting Services allows you to easily build reports together or separately. SQL Server 2005 supports both relational and OLAP data and provides a query editor for both, including SQL Query Editor and MDX Query Editor.
Report Builder:Report Builder, a new component of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, allows business users to create their own reports using a user-friendly model of their data. Report Builder takes advantage of the Reporting Services platform to bring ad hoc reporting to all end users. Users create and edit reports with the Report Builder client application. The Report Builder user interface is built on top of familiar Microsoft Office paradigms such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Figure 6: Design Reports with Report Builder
Report Builder is a ClickOnce application deployed through the browser. Users start by selecting report layout templates containing predefined data sections such as tables, matrices, and charts. They drag and drop report items from the model to the design surface and set constraints to filter the report data. The model contains all of the necessary information for the Report Builder to automatically generate the source query and retrieve the requested data. The Report Builder also allows users to:
• Add text and formatting to reports.
• Create new fields and calculations defined using the model.
• Preview, print, and publish reports.
• Export report data to formats such as Microsoft Excel.
Integration with the Microsoft Office System:Reports served up by the Report Server in Reporting Services can run in the context of Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Office System applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. You can use SharePoint features to subscribe to reports, create new versions of reports, and
distribute reports. You can also open reports in Word or Excel to view HTML versions of reports.
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