What is Business Intelligence ( BI )?

What is Business Intelligence ( BI )? Business Intelligence Development Studio ( BIDS )? SQL Server Reporting Services ( SSRS )? SQL Server Integration Services ( SSIS )? SQL Server Analysis Services ( SSAS )? What is Business Intelligence ( BI )?

Business intelligence is simply using software to manage large amounts of data to get meaningful and actionable results. It is also an growing field within IT where people are choosing to specialise in.

Software associated with BI includes SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Biztalk, Business Objects, Cognos…..

Business intelligence is used to make smarter marketing, identify new markets, efficiency and cost savings.

What is Business Intelligence Development Studio ( BIDS )?

Business Intelligence Development Studio ( BIDS ) is a custom version of Visual Studio which is supplied with SQL Server where the development of Analysis Services databases and mining models, Integration Services packages and Reporting Services reports is completed.

If BIDS is installed on a system that already has a version Visual Studio installed then these additional project types are added to the existing installed Visual Studio.

What is SQL Server Reporting Services ( SSRS )?

SQL Server Reporting Services is a comprehensive reporting feature of SQL Server where reports can be created, deployed and managed across an Enterprise scale environment.

SSRS is used by many firms to replace Crystal Reports, Excel and Access as it has a far greater range of abilities and features as well as far greater performance.

What is SQL Server Integration Services ( SSIS )?

SQL Server Integration Services is often described as an ETL tool as its function is to Extract, Transform and Load data (ETL). It is often used to perform repetitive tasks as each process can be saved as a SSIS package and can be scheduled to run automatically.

SSIS packages can be made simply via the GUI, BIDS ( drag and drop ) or enhanced using T-SQL.

What is SQL Server Analysis Services ( SSAS )?

SQL Server Analysis Services is made up of two distinct part which an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Data mining.

OLAP allows the building of multidimensional structures which are known as cubes. Using these structures businesses can then analyse the data to solve problems. Cubes are queried using Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) rather than T-SQL.

Data mining allows the analysis of huge amounts of data and is used to find patterns and insight into information which is not as seemingly obvious as that found in Cubes.

Originally published at https://parvtheitgeek.com on January 14, 2014.