How can I learn Business Intelligence? Part-1

Technorati Tags: Data Warehouse,Learn Business Intelligence,Enterprise Data Warehouse,Dimensional Modeling,SQL,OLTP,OLAP

How can I learn Business Intelligence? I have been asked this question by my colleagues & customers several times. Actually It is great to see that people in market now realized that Business Intelligence doesn't mean SQL Server or Database. In other words, You shouldn't expect person who has deep SQL Skills to be able to deliver Business Intelligence. Although it took some time market to realise, finally we are there! We can understand from question “How can I learn Business Intelligence?” from people who are in SQL Market for ages.

I generally reply this question with another question: Which Business Intelligence layer are you interested in? Yes, I divided BI into layers:

 

-Data Warehousing Layer

-ETL Layer (Extract Transform Load)

-Data Processing Layer

-Data Management Information Later

-Data Visualisation & Content Management Layer.

 

I would recommend my customers and colleagues to start with Data Warehousing concepts. Because it is not easy to switch from stressful OLTP mind set like, transaction/ sec, High batch requests, concurrency, locking/blocking etc… to relaxed Data Warehousing OLAP mind set like, bulk loads, staging, transforming data etc…

Here is my few recommendation about Data Warehousing:

It is very useful to understand Enterprise DWH

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh146875.aspx

 

There is also another useful link which provides wide range of resources about Data Warehousing:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dd421879.aspx

I also recommend you to read book called The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling.

 

For our Premier customers, we have two modules in BI Academy. These are :

 

Module 1
BI Fundamentals
Overview of the fundamental concepts in a BI solution by introducing the different multi-dimensional models.

Module 2
Building and loading data warehouses with SSIS & T-SQL
Review how to improve the performance of a BI solution and review how to troubleshoot the most common scenarios, including DW Design, SSIS Development and how to load data into a Data Warehouse.

 

Covering these topics with some hands on experience should give good starting point to Data Warehousing Layer.

I will be covering rest of layers on following posts.