Business Intelligence Technology » Business Intelligence

Microsoft updates BI strategy

Jay Dugan — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:36:59 +0000

During the past week, Microsoft has made announcements regarding changes to their business intelligence strategy. One significant announcement stated that dashboarding, scorecarding and analytical functionality were being moved from PerformancePoint Server 2007 to become a component of SharePoint Server. PerformancePoint Server would no longer be offered as a standalone product. Microsoft says that they are doing this to lower the total cost of ownership and make BI information more accessible across the enterprise.

For companies considering a move to integrate SharePoint Server with Dynamics GP, this would make a lot of sense. Those now owning Enterprise SharePoint CALs with Software Assurance can upgrade to PerformancePoint at no additional cost.

Check out the IT Bookworm Blog

Jay Dugan — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:45:30 +0000

If you have not already, please check out Brent Sheets’ blog IT Bookworm that appears in this section. It is a great resource. Brent brings to our attention enterprise and IT development books with free chapter downloads. This week’s selection is Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Unleashed by Marc Wolenik and Damian Sinay. It is on a subject near and dear to my heart. I have written about MS CRM 4.0 in earlier posts and recently managed an enterprise roll out complete with cusomizations.

Chapter 3, The Evolution of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is provided as a free download. It is interesting to read about the earlier versions and see how Microsoft leveraged the user experience of those earlier versions into CRM 4.0, which is finally a ready for prime time application. Pre-planning is important in these types of projects. The more information you can get before hand the better things will go. Brent’s blog is a great way to try before you buy and get some good free content at the same time.

Business Rules

Jay Dugan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:42:30 +0000

At some point, every organization realizes the need for a database but often missteps result from not recognizing the importance that business rules play in database design.

Business rules are a description of a policy, procedure or principal within a specific organization. Business rules define entities, attributes, relationships and constraints; all of which are building blocks of a solid database.

Entities are the people, places and things in an organization and from a database perspective are things about which data can be stored. The characteristics of the entities that the organization does business with are attributes. The relationship of the organization’s entities is learned through business rules, which determine how data will be related in the database, one to one, one to many or many to many. Constraints are part of the business rules and determine the restrictions on data. Constraints also protect data integrity.

I knew a DBA who created a database based on assumptions and not on careful documentation of the business rules. It was a failure because it did not deliver the information that the company needed. It was used for a short period and then abandoned as unworkable.

Understanding and following the business rules allows the database designer to build a database that accurately reflects the workings of the business and becomes a useful tool for the manipulation of data and delivery of reliable information to the organization. Let me know of your experiences with database design.