Advice for someone who wants to start in Business Intelligence? [closed]

Question

What advice would you have for someone who wants to start in the BI (Business Intelligence) domain?

I where and what I should start with: Books, Blogs, WebCasts... What I should pay attention to and what I should stay away from.

Are the Microsoft technologies worth while ?

Answer 1

The MS technology stack is quite good and is by far the most accessible (try to get hold of a copy of Cognos Reportnet for self-learning). Where you will run into trouble (and this is the main barrier to entry for gaining a B.I. skillset) is to actually get experience working with real data. It's quite hard to come up with a realistic toy scenario for this sort of thing.

This means that you have to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem that this poses. One option would be to try to get a job as a B.I. developer somewhere like a government department or other place that has trouble recruiting due to salary constraints. Clear evidence of technical skills and a demonstrated interest in the business might get your foot in the door.

This will be a bit harder in a recession. However there is still an ongoing skill shortage of good B.I. people. The reason is (IMO) not the lack of technical skills (the technology isn't rocket science). Instead, I think it is the aforementioned chicken-and-egg problem and the fact that the B.I. domain involves customer intimacy to do it well. It lends itself to working in an analyst/programmer mode with direct customer contact (one of the reasons I do this type of work). If you like working in this mode it might be a good line for you to get into.

Edit: Someone who's just had a job offer in this space asked whether he should take the job.

Answer 2

I found the "project real" from microsoft really helpful while getting into the bi-world. Its a real world bi project, supported by microsoft, to develop and show best practices regarding to all the areas of bi like etl, data warehouse design, cube design, etc.

Answer 3

Business Objects http://www.businessobjects.com/ are quite a big player in this area and familiarity with their products will also help you break into B.I. roles.

For practise data, I would recommend something like the anonomised search records from aol that came out a couple of years back - http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/06/aol-proudly-releases-massive-amounts-of-user-search-data/ This is real world size and is an interesting database with some published search sets.

Answer 4

I would stress you to read this book; might seem kind of outdated but the same theory still applies today. It is probably the best starter for general BI.

The Data Warehouse Toolkit - Ralph Kimball

Regarding Microsoft's BI it is a medium-sized tool that can do the job in your first steps (I have more experience with Cognos though). Haven't used MS tools since 2005 so I can't tell much about it.

In case you happen to be interested in Cognos, I have a few videos which can be of help: Cognos Tutorials

Good luck with your project.

Answer 5

Get the Kimball Books (specially this one http://www.amazon.com/The-Data-Warehouse-Toolkit-Dimensional/dp/0471200247) and for starters you may want to start with the MS BI Framework The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit and the SQL Server Enterprise (MS BI Bundle with the database, ETL and reporting), it's easy a readily available, specially if you are a student with the MSDNAA, you can get the enterprise version for free!!!

Answer 6

For general business intelligence, I found the Kimball Group as a great source for best practices.

If you would like to start building your own project, check out GoodData Platform. We have full BI stack Platform as a Service and you can start for free (evaluation period) with access to all resources and learn from Tutorials on our Developer Portal.

Answer 7

I would say try to find a few classes. Microsoft technologies are worth the time. There are many large companies running on the .Net framework.

Answer 8

We use this to get a feel of Microstrategy: http://www.teradatauniversitynetwork.com/apply-and-do