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Dive into the business intelligence (BI) features in SharePoint 2010—and use the right combination of tools to deliver compelling solutions. This practical guide helps you explore several BI application services available in SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 R2. You’ll learn each technology with step-by-step instructions, and determine which ones work best in specific BI scenarios—whether you’re a SharePoint administrator, SQL Server developer, or business analyst.
Choose the BI tools that meet your needs—and learn how they work together
Examine the BI lifecycle, from determining key performance indicators to building dashboards
Take Microsoft Excel® further—gain more control and functionality with web-based Excel Services
Mash up data from multiple sources using PowerPivot for Excel 2010
Create data visualizations with objects, context, and metrics using Microsoft Visio® Services
Build dashboards, scorecards, and other monitoring and analysis tools with PerformancePoint® Services
Use SharePoint to view BI reports side by side, no matter which tools were used to produced them
Your companion web content includes:
Interactive exercises that help you try out concepts or techniques
Code samples that enable you to work with the exercises
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Norm Warren is a writer for PerformancePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2010, at Microsoft and has written articles on PerformancePoint® Server for the information worker, IT Pro, and SQL Server® BI developer audiences. He has a Master's degree in computer information technology and is currently earning an MBA with an emphasis in financial accounting. At Microsoft, Norm gives guidance to the BI community in the way of a blog, Norm's PerformancePoint Server blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/normbi/). He is also a member of The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI).
Mariano Teixeira Neto is a software design engineer on the SQL Server Analysis Services team. For the last three years he’s been working on the PowerPivot for SharePoint.
John Campbell is a program manager with Microsoft’s Excel Services team.
Stacia Misner is the founder of Data Inspirations (www.datainspirations.com), which delivers global business intelligence (BI) consulting and education services. As a consultant, educator, mentor, and author specializing in business intelligence and performance management solutions that use Microsoft technologies, she has more than 25 years of experience in information technology and has focused exclusively on Microsoft BI technologies since 2000. She is the author of multiple books related to Microsoft SQL Server®, and most recently coauthored "Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2" and "Building Integrated Business Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010." Stacia is also a Microsoft Certified IT Professional-BI and a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist-BI. She currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband, Gerry, where you can contact her via e-mail at smisner@datainspirations.com.
We work a fair bit with the individual components described in this book, but wanted a 50,000ft view to check our application of them was appropriate.
In that regard, this book succeeds.
However the prose style is dull and repetitive to a degree that begins to become counterproductive to getting the information across.
I hesitate to the blame the authors; I can well imagine the MS Hand of God descending to prescribe that certain terms must be used in full etc, and every MS book seems to follow the
1) Tell-them-what-you'll-tell-them
2) Tell-them-it
3) Tell-them-what-you-told-them
format with depressing consistency.
This in itself guarantees repetition, but then you're faced with prose like this:
"If you are publishing to a Sharepoint site that has PowerPivot for SharePoint installed, you should publish it to the PowerPivot Gallery. The PowerPivot Gallery is a special PowerPivot-enabled SharePoint document library with additional functionality that goes above and beyond the features available in standard SharePoint 2010 document libraries."
By the end of that my mind has wandered in the morass of repeat terms that studiously ignore the context in which points are being made (book, chapter, preceding text)
I'd offer an alternative:
"If you are publishing to a site that has PowerPivot installed, you should publish it to the PowerPivot Gallery. This is a special document library with functionality that goes above and beyond the features available in standard libraries."
Still not pulse-quickening stuff, but I can make it to the end without nodding off.
And this sort of thing is evident time and time and time again....
This tells me that there is either no editorial influence, or far too much editorial influence.
Either way, it ultimately detracts from a decent overview. This is a 375 page book, with a far better 250 page book struggling to get out of it.Read more ›
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:4.0 out of 5 stars 2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 starsYou gotta be looking to work at the big end of town15 Jan 2012
By Robert D. Crane - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition
This book is a very worthwhile read and reference but it does have a limited audience. That audience is restricted to those with access to the high end version of SharePoint Server 2010. Basically SharePoint Server 2010 will all the options enabled. It is however a very worthwhile reference for the simple reason that there are few books that dive into that level of detail on these high end features of SharePoint Enterprise.
Initially I was going to say that this book focused more on talking about the capabilities of BI (business intelligence) in SharePoint Server but as I got more into the book I found there were more and more hands on examples which made it really great. The only problems with these examples is that they require a high level of product and setup to really take advantage of but they certainly do give insight into what BI is possible with SharePoint especially when combined with SQL server.
This book is therefore great for people looking to understand the high end features of SharePoint Server 2010 (and to some extend Office 365) but it does require an investment in products such as Visio, SQL Reporting and so on that in many cases are not readily obtained or implemented. This is certainly not a book for end users and is more aimed at the IT Professional looking to bring the integration required for BI into the workplace. However, for the IT professional looking to scale up their SharePoint skills to the higher level of product and potentially to the abilities provided by Office 365 this is more than a worthwhile reference for the library.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book that shows what you can do with SharePoint for your BI projects13 Sep 2011
By Vidmantas Matelis - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is great introduction level book for SharePoint admins or BI Developers who wants to understand how to get the most out of SharePoint in BI environment. This book gives you a very good introduction to Excel Services, PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint, Visio and Performance Point services. There are many step-by-step guides that show you to work with each BI tool. For example, for PowerPivot this book has step by step guide on how to load data into PowerPivot for Excel from database, Windows Azure Marketplace or clipboard, how to write simple DAX formulas, how to create charts/reports and how to publish and use your workbook in SharePoint. Overall this is great book!
