Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good for an overview, but little else
Comment: I bought this because all the reviews were good but I've been very disappointed. The book provides an excellent overview that clearly details what BI features SQL Server 2005 has but it does little to actually explain HOW you do things. Yes, I know there are the do by learning sessions but they are pretty basic. I've been trying to implement some standard ETL scenarios with Integration Services and the book has been nearly useless. I can't even get it to explain fundamental concepts such as the distinguishing characteristics between a Data Source and a Connection. Not helpful!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Comment: This is overall a very good read for those who like the hands on approach to learning. The author certainly knows the topic.
Being new to this topic, I found it very easy to get lost in the details of the step by step examples, quite often forgetting the objective of the exercise which are often several pages long!
There are also errors in some of the examples which are not so obvious to
fix without the help of google. ( Tip for Vista users, dont use the Fox Pro drivers in the download get the latest from Microsoft) This is especially frustrating for newcomers when the error does not often surface until you are executing later examples (the examples in this book, base on each other)
Please dont let my comments put you off buying this excellent book. For beginners, expect to have to read the book more than once.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great book for those who learn by doing
Comment: This is a great book for those of us starting to learn the feature rich Microsoft BI tools.
Its greatest strength is to fit the tools and features into the BI life cycle. I tried several other books and approaches but couldn't get the big picture with enough technical details to actually start building a BI solution.
This book is the perfect place to start using this feature rich BI tool set. Without knowing how all the tools fit together it was difficult to make any real progress with more feature specific material.
I highly recommend this book to everyone looking to learn BI technology from Microsoft. The examples were clear. This is a book for those of us who learn by doing.
I also used Brian's book on Reporting Services 2000 a few years ago. It allowed me to go from no experience to writing reports in a few days
Many thanks to Brian for the great book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Comprehensive Read
Comment: This book is a perfect place to jump in and get your feet wet. I can't say how many tech books have put me to sleep before I've absorbed the content, this is not one of them. It's well laid out and will give you the understanding and ability to create your own dashboards. I agree with the reviews that this book will not make you an expert in Integration Services, Analysis Services, Business Intelligence Studio, or Excel Services. It does save you the money, time and headaches from buying each specific book and trying to incorporate all of these products on your own.
Good Luck!
Customer Rating:
Summary: An excellent tool for MI tools developers
Comment: Is the next step when you start working with MI tools
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