Good resources to learn business intelligence?

Question

What resources (books, videos, tutorials, etc) would you recommend to learn about business intelligence?

Answer 1

Toby Segaran's "Programming Collective Intelligence" has a lot of nice stuff on how to attack different data problems. It's not exactly data mining, though.

These tutorials from Andrew Moore (Google) look interesting.

Actually, I see a lot of overlap between "PCI" and the topics Andrew Moore cites. In that case I'd highly recommend "PCI" as an intro.

Answer 2

Hi

I have used Microsoft BI suite and it comes with a complete package to develop Business Intelligence solutions.

In fact BIDS(Business Intelligence Development Studio) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173767.aspx brings it all (Integration Services which is used to stuff like ETL, Analysis Services forms the OLAP part and Reporting Services covers the visualization) to one place.

Please check the following links for individual tutorials-

Integration services - http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/integration.aspx

Analysis Services - http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/analysis-services.aspx

Reporting Services - http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/reporting.aspx

Sample databases are available online to play around with like-

AdventureWorks database - http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=18407

There are also webcasts available at MS website which should prove helpful.

I hope this helps.

cheers

Answer 3

Ralph Kimball has a bunch of great books on BI. There are several good virtual labs on BI at msdn as well.

Answer 4

I'm currently in a Business Intelligence Internship with a "software" company that develops for the banking industry. Anywho, these are the resources my "mentor" recommended to me:

So far, I found the Projet REAL to be the most helpful free resource.

Web Sites

CodePlex Open Source Project Community BIDSHelper, SSAS stored procedures, etc

Project REAL Reference Implementation The Hello World of BI

Optional Books

MDX Solutions by George Spofford

The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server 2005 and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset by Joy Mundy, Warren Thornthwaite, and Ralph Kimball

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services Unleashed by Kirk Haselden

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by Brian Larson

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Unleashed by Edward Melomed

Answer 5

Good answers all around, but I'd also recommend Jaynes' book on probability and statistics, Probability Theory: the Logic of Science. I currently work in BI and find that a thorough grounding in dealing with uncertainty (and Bayesian probability approaches are really the only solid way, as Jaynes shows) is among my strongest assets -- of course when you're data mining across billions of data points you have to cut corners, but it would be despicable to not even know what approximations you're making and what their cost can be.

Jaynes' book is far from elementary, but if you can't follow it easily then you might want to choose a different area of programming that doesn't require such utter facility with maths and thorough theoretical grounding.

Answer 6

The data warehouse toolkit by Ralph Kimball is a great place to start. He's also got one called the Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit which covers the entire MS BI stack. Good luck!

Answer 7

• Books, The classics:

  • The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit- Ralph Kimball
  • Business Intelligence Roadmap - Larissa Moss & Shaku Arte
  • e-Business Intelligence: Turning Information into Knowledge into Profit - Bernard Liautaud

• Web

  • http://blog.maia-intelligence.com/
  • http://blogs.technet.com/andrew/
  • http://biroundup.wordpress.com/
  • http://wissemhabboub.unblog.fr/ (in french)
  • http://analytics.typepad.com/oz-analytics/
  • I'm gathering more links here http://www.delicious.com/bidataquality

• Other The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) & the B-eye Network provide excellent ressources and trainings to fully master Business Intelligence

Answer 8

You can use the services of Expert MS BI Training An exclusive tutor can always be better than a book or blog.