18/06/2014

From Web to Web - MS BI demo

What are the Microsoft Business Intelligence tools (stack) and what are they used for?
Here I give you one easy and understandable demonstration of the SSIS, SSAS and SSRS tools using MS SQL Database and some sample data from a weather website.


Let's say that you want to do your own report and graphics of the temperatures of London.
What do you need? A machine (I am using a small VM), a database, where to store the data (in my case I choose MS SQL Database), the MS BI tools (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS) and some time :).
The idea is the following:
1. There is data of the temperature in a website. For every day we have the highest temperature and the lowest and some more data like humidity, pressure, etc.
2. The website allows us to download this data for specific period (in my case the month of January 2014) into a CSV file. Each line in the file is a day with it's data. The file has 31 lines.
3. Using the SSIS (Microsoft Visual Studio) we create a SSIS projects and create a package, which i Extracting the data from the file, Transforming it and Loading it into the database (ETL).
4. Using the SSAS (Microsoft Visual Studio) we create a SSAS project with a cube, dimensions and measures based on the data loaded into the database. We need to configure the SSAS server and deploy the SSAS project into it in order to be accessible by the SSRS.
5. Using the SSRS (Microsoft Visual Studio) we create a SSRS project with a report containing graphic and table with the temperature data based on the cube from the SSAS project.
6. Configuring the SSRS local server and publishing/deploying the report into it will allow us to visualize the report directly into our web browser. In this way the cycle is closed (from Web to Web).

So...MS BI is a set of tools allowing you to Extract, Test and Load data and then perform Analysis and at the end generate Reports of those analysis.
Somebody will say: "Why do you need all of this when it's possible to show the results directly from the web site using some scripting?". For the current example this is true, you don't need to have all of this, but for a complex system which has 10 or more different datasources (web sites, files, etc.) and If you want to create a lot of different reports, then you need this.
The cool things about the MS BI stack are:
- There are 3 separate parts (ETL, Analysis, Reports). Splitting the work.
- It is able to work with different databases (at the same time).
- The design is very visual, so the developing and debugging are easier.
- Migration is easy, everything is save as separate projects.
This is BI, it's the future and I like it :)

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