Chapter 6. Turning Data into Information
In This Chapter
Understanding centralized data storage in BI
Finding out more about SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
Exploring SharePoint
There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment — and you start to decline.
A modern organization generates a tremendous amount of data. If you were to peer into the source systems that hold the raw data you'd see rows and columns of data with little to no context into what it means to you and your organization. You may see numbers indicating how long a particular step in a manufacturing process took to complete or an inventory level for a particular ingredient at a particular point in time.
Taking this raw data and turning it into actionable information that directly relates to the decisions you need to make is what Microsoft Business Intelligence is all about.
In this chapter, you explore some of the technologies that take raw data and turn it into information. In particular, you explore a BI concept called a Data Warehouse and a Data Mart. You will gain an understanding of the Microsoft BI tools that are used to grab the raw data, organize it, and display it in a useful format — turning it into information.
Data Storage for BI
Even in the dark days before business intelligence arrived on the scene, people managed to slog through multiple data-generating source systems to find and pull out the ...
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