Add-ons no MS Business Intelligence Developer should be without

The main two applications that are used for Microsoft-centric development are Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). There are a few add-on utilities that increase the power and usefulness of the out of the box applications. I find these invaluable: MDXStudio – the brilliant Mosha Pasumansky‘s take on how MDX development should […]

Do as I say, not as I do

Perhaps that should be – Do as I say, not as Adventure Works and Project Real do SSAS modeling question: What’s the best approach to handling header/detail records? Approach #1) Use Measure Groups Approach #2) Consolidate via either ETL or relational operations Most clients I deal with have some form of Header/Details modeled in some […]

Ballmer and Muglia have it wrong

“It’s a poor carpenter who blames his tools.” I’ve been monitoring the twittersphere and blogosphere about the new BI tools coming from Microsoft. While I am excited about these new capabilities, the “buzz” around these things also creates some concerns. Over the past ten years, I’ve been fascinated by the persistence of the idea that […]

Welcome! – and what this Blog is about

I chose “Information in Context” as the name of this blog for two primary reasons: It’s a central concept behind Business Intelligence, which is one of my main passions and endeavors. This is the idea that information really only becomes “Business Intelligence” when it has been imbued with the appropriate context. One might say that […]