SQL Server 2005 and Office2007 BI White paper

2007 Microsoft Office System Business Intelligence IntegrationWhite PaperPublished: February 1, 2007Author: Anthony T. Mann, PresidentMann Publishing GroupFor the latest information, please see:ContentsOverview3Introduction3The Microsoft Vision for Business Intelligence4Analyzing Business Data5The BI Platform5The End-User Tools6Reporting Services 2005 and Office SharePoint Server 20076Analysis Services 2005 and Office Excel 20077Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 20078Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 20078Office SharePoint Server 2007 Integration Features and Benefits8Integration with Report Center9Selecting the Right Mode11Native Mode11SharePoint Integration Mode11Installation Components and Setup12Report Server Configuration12SharePoint Server Configuration13Creating Reports14Developers15End-Users15Viewing Reports16Managing Reports17Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and Microsoft Office Excel 200719Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Integration Features and Benefits20Installation Components and Setup23Using Office Excel 2007 with Analysis Services23Analysis Services 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 200725Installation Components25Using Data Mining Add-ins26Table Analysis Tools for Excel26Data Mining Client for Excel29Data Mining Templates for Visio30Conclusion32Appendix - SQL Server 2005 Editions33OverviewBusiness Intelligence (BI) just became a lot easier! The release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, used in conjunction with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, delivers numerous benefits in terms of Return on Investment (ROI) for a company, design and implementation for its Information Technology (IT) department, and ease of use for end-users.According to the research firm IDC, Microsofts BI tools are growing at more than twice the rate of the overall market. Microsoft technologies are at the forefront of the BI market and are continuing to grow in breadth and capabilities. This paper discusses the important drivers, reasons, and technology features when integrating SQL Server 2005 and the 2007 Office system. To keep this paper as brief as possible, it references some additional Web sites that you can visit for more information.This paper is divided into two main sections. The first shows an overview of the three main BI integration points between Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-Ins for Office 2007The second part of the paper breaks down each of the above integration points by showing what software components are needed, features and benefits, how to install and configure the components, and how to use them.IntroductionBusiness Intelligence is considered by some to be an elusive and mysterious technology. Users who think that BI is too difficult may be reluctant to use it. Businesses that think BI is too expensive may never implement it. When using Microsoft technologies, these fears become moot. SQL Server 2005 provides an enterprise-ready BI platform (the “hard” part of BI) while the 2007 Office system provides familiar front-end tools for end-users to easily access data from the BI platform of SQL Server 2005. In many cases, comprehensive BI solutions can be developed, deployed, and used in a matter of hours or days, instead of weeks, months, or years.This section introduces Microsofts vision for Business Intelligence, the keys to analyzing business data, and an overview of the Business Intelligence technologies available in SQL Server 2005.The Microsoft Vision for Business IntelligenceMicrosofts vision for BI is to: “Improve organizations by providing business insights to all employees leading to better, faster, more relevantdecisions”Many BI vendors aim to enable employees to make better, faster, and more relevant decisions, but Microsofts vision is to extend this statement to all employees not just business analysts, financial analysts, or executives. Every employee needs to make business decisions every day. However, the impact and scope of those decisions differ. For example, an executive has to make decisions on whether to acquire a competitor. On the other hand, a product manager has to decide how to price products. The list of decisions, whether conscious or not, is endless, so employees need help from software. Microsoft tackles the challenge of making BI accessible to all employees by addressing key issues to enable them to have the right information at the right time in the right format: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is too high By building BI into the core SQL Server platform, TCO is low. This covers all aspects of total cost, including software, tools, development, installation, uptime, maintenance, support, and training. BI tools are too difficult to use By enabling the 2007 Microsoft Office system as one of the end-user tools, employees can access and analyze BI information using tools they already have on their desktops and already know how to use. Complete offering Microsoft offers a complete end-to-end solution to ensure that all employees have access to BI data, including:o SQL Server database platform Platform for database and application designers, developers, and network administrators. This same platform that runs an organizations Line of Business applications offers high scale data warehousing. The platform can leverage built-in BI features, such as Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services. All BI technologies are tightly integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment for software developers and designers.o 2007 Microsoft Office system End-user tools for general users and business executives that enable access to business insight from every desktop.o Performance management applications Delivered with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 for end-users and business executives. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is designed to help improve performance by integrating monitoring, analysis, and planning into a single application.This paper focuses on the integration between the 2007 Office system and the SQL Server 2005 back-end BI technologies. The goal is to show how simple it is to bring BI to every desktop in every organization. In most cases, a few simple mouse clicks put information into the hands of even the most skeptical and novice users.Analyzing Business DataBusinesses need to constantly analyze their efficiency and profitability to streamline their operations. The only way to adequately do this is to analyze the Line of Business (LOB) data to find answers to questions like: Which products/services are the most profitable and what factors determine their profitability? How can non-profitable products/services become profitable? How well are customer service programs operating? How effective are business processes, including sales cycles, fulfillment timeliness, customer satisfaction, and employee retention? There are two key parts in using technology to help businesses analyze their business data to answer the questions presented above the BI platform and the end-user tools.The BI PlatformThe back-end BI platform performs complex calculations and analytics. SQL Server 2005 forms the core of the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform, enabling end-users to analyze their consolidated enterprise data through the 2007 Office system. SQL Server 2005 is a complete BI platform that includes these technologies: SQL Server Relational Database Technology that provides a robust, scalable, and enterprise-ready Data Warehouse platform. SQL Server 2005 has substantial enhancements in partitioning, manageability, and query optimizations to streamline data warehouse operations and increase performance. Additional information about data warehousing can be found at the Microsoft Web site at: SQL Server Analysis Services Technology that enables businesses to analyze its corporate data by using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). Analysis Services includes advanced analytical features such as complete data mining and key performance indicator frameworks, enabling organizations to accommodate multiple analytic needs within one solution. Additional information about Analysis Services can be found throughout this paper and from the Microsoft Web site at: and SQL Server Reporting Services Technology that serves as a complete reporting platform so that end-users can view data using a Web browser or custom application. Reporting Services includes report authoring tools for software developers and end-users themselves. More information about Reporting Services can be found throughout this paper and from the Microsoft Web site at: SQL Server Integration Services Technology that can be used to move and transform data between sources and destinations, regardless of format. It can also cleanse data and ensure data integrity to allow organizations to integrate heterogeneous data sources when building data warehouse solutions. Integration Services is not the focus of this paper, but more information can be found on the Microsoft Web site at:The SQL Server Business Development Studio is a common, Visual Studio-based development environment that extends across all of the SQL Server BI technologies. The familiar Visual Studio environment provides great developer productivity and is optimized to provide a true application development environment that supports the full project development lifecycle.The End-User ToolsEnd-user tools are used by employees to access and analyze complex business data stored on the BI platform. The new release of the 2007 Office system has been optimized to make it very easy for users to access the server-based data hosted on the BI platform. End-users can use a familiar desktop environment to enable them to be more productive without learning new software. In addition to the 2007 Microsoft Office system for end-user analysis, the end-to-end BI solution from Microsoft also includes Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Office Performance Point Server is an integrated performance management application that helps organizations drive alignment across the enterprise, while allowing business executives and end-users to monitor, analyze, and plan key business activities. Even though this paper focuses on the capabilities of the 2007 Office system, it is important to note that this is not the only Microsoft offering for accessing BI data on the SQL Server platform. Additional details on the components of the complete Microsoft BI offering can be found at: Reporting Services 2005 and Office SharePoint Server 2007SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) enables deep integration between Reporting Services and the Microsoft SharePoint technologies (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007). This integration enables an end-user to view and manage reports completely from within a SharePoint document library.Integrating Reporting Services with Office SharePoint Server 2007 is referred to as SharePoint Integration Mode. Having Reporting Services host reports in the reporting services database only and not integrating with Office SharePoint Server 2007 is referred to as Native Mode.Additional information about integration mode and native mode, specific integration features between Reporting Services 2005 and Office SharePoint Server 2007, installation and configuration, and the usage of Reporting Services 2005 is discussed in the second part of this paper.Analysis Services 2005 and Office Excel 2007 The release of Office Excel 2007 greatly enhances a users ability to access and analyze data from SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. With Office Excel 2007, end-users can browse data stored in multidimensional OLAP cubes in Analysis Services. Office Excel 2007 enables users to easily build PivotTable views to “slice and dice” data any way they wish. Figure 1 shows a PivotTable in Office Excel 2007 that connects to Analysis Services sample data.Figure 1: PivotTable in Office Excel 2007.Using Office Excel 2007 to access Analysis Services data is significantly easier than it was with prior versions of Excel. With only a couple of mouse clicks, the PivotTable Field List exposes a user-friendly metadata layer of Analysis Services to the end-user (see Figure 1). The PivotTable Field List enables end-users to quickly select important business data that they want to include in the PivotTable for further analysis.Additional information about the specific features that enrich the end-user analysis experience, installation, configuration, and using Office Excel 2007 with Analysis Services 2005 is discussed in the second part of this paper.Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007It can be quite easy to write a report to view any data metrics that you are looking for. For example, if you want to view all sales in a given fiscal year grouped by division and quarter, this would be a very simple report to create. Using Reporting Services, you could create and deploy such a report in a matter of only minutes. Developers can also quickly create an Analysis Services cube that can be browsed by end-users to display this type of data. However, what if you didnt know what you were looking for? What if there was a way to spot trends in data that you didnt even know existed? Thats where data mining comes into play. Data mining uses machine learning algorithms to analyze existing data and to build models that represent the patterns found in the data. This technology alone can help increase a companys bottom-line and become more efficient.The Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 is comprised of three separate components: Table Analysis Tools for Excel Allows you to analyze your spreadsheet data in powerful ways with just a few mouse clicks, by employing SQL Server Data Mining behind the scenes. Data Mining Client for Excel Enables you to create and manage the entire lifecycle of a data mining project, including preparing data, building and managing mining models, and predicting results. Data Mining Templates for Visio Enables you to render graphical Visio diagrams to communicate the results of data mining operations to others in your company.Additional information about specific features, installation and configuration, and using the data mining add-ins is discussed in the second part of this paper.Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 The first part of this paper gave you an overview of integrating Reporting Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007. Integration between Reporting Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007 is simple to implement, but requires some configuration before it will work. You must install specific components on the Reporting Services and Office SharePoint server 2007. Then, you must configure each server. This part of the paper dives into the details to show the benefits of integrating the two products and the configurations needed to perform the integration.Office SharePoint Server 2007 Integration Features and BenefitsThere are numerous benefits and advantages to integrating Reporting Services with Office SharePoint Server 2007. Prior to SP2, Reporting Services reports were published to a report server and were executed solely in that environment. The integration point between Reporting Services and SharePoint was two separate Web Parts: Report Explorer and Report Viewer. These Web Parts made it possible to view reports within SharePoint, but presented these challenges: The report content source was always separate from the SharePoint content source. Reports were hosted on a report server and were only displayed within the SharePoint environment. Security of reports was managed by the report server, so there was no unified security model. The user interface was not consistent between managing and viewing reports because each was performed in a separate environment. Filtering of report data could only be done by using report parameters that had to be defined in the reports themselves. Internet-facing SharePoint sites required deploying the report server outside the firewall.With SQL Server 2005 SP2, deep integration with Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers numerous advantages, including: Single consistent user interface for managing and viewing reports. A much richer user experience. Storing reports in Office SharePoint Server 2007 document libraries. This allows a report to use standard Office SharePoint Server 2007 features, such as workflow, versioning, and collaboration. Reports and all associated resources are stored within the Office SharePoint Server 2007 database and are automatically synchronized with the same reports that are stored and executed from the report server. Scheduling, caching, and subscriptions are stored in the report server database only because this functionality is not available natively in a SharePoint document library. Single security model for reports because they are treated like any other document inside a SharePoint document library. Common report filtering paradigm that is used in SharePoint document libraries and filtering Web Parts.Integration with Report CenterWhile Reporting Services reports can be managed in any site or document library, Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes out of the box functionality for reporting, referred to as the Report Center. Report Center is delivered as a site template to enable you to easily create an Office SharePoint Server 2007 site for hosting reports. When you create a site using this template, navigation bar links are added to manage reporting resources, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2 also shows a sample dashboard with defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).Figure 2: Navigation Bar Links Highlighting New Resources Category.The navigation bar links in the Report Center site template are: Documents Document library to store a collection of documents. Reports Document library that can be used for managing Reporting Services and Excel Services reports. Dashboards Listing of all dashboards that you can configure for your users. For example, you can have one dashboard that shows executives the report KPIs that are useful to them. However, project managers need to see more detailed information about their projects, so they would need a different dashboard with different KPIs. Resources Folder containing these types of resources that can be used with Reporting Services reports:o Data Connections Document library that contains shared data sources and/or report models that can be used among all reports.o Report Calendar Calendar list that can contain any date-related information for a report or report schedule. For example, you can indicate on which dates report data is refreshed or loaded. This item has no specific integration points with Reporting Services. o Reference Library Document library