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SQL Server Business Intelligence Tools

By: Jeremy Kadlec | Read Comments (1) | Print

Jeremy is the CTO @ Edgewood Solutions, co-founder of MSSQLTips.com and SQL Server MVP since 2009.

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Problem
One of the fastest growing segments in the SQL Server market is the Business Intelligence area. With vast amounts of data, managing the data and gaining insight has become more of a challenge. Luckily, many organizations are focusing on products to improve the insight into the data for IT professionals and users alike. This give us more time to focus on our needs and data, rather than having to build sophisticated custom products as a portion of the requirements. As such, in this tip we will outline the vendors providing Business Intelligence tools in the SQL Server market.

Solution
The vendors below offer BI tools to support SQL Server 2000 or 2005. The tools have been categorized based on the assistance for either data warehousing, reporting or extraction, transformation and loading. Then the tool has been further refined to indicate if the intended tool is for the user or IT community.

ID	Offering	Data Warehousing	Reporting	Extract, Transform and Load
1	90 Degrees Software		IT Focus
2	Applix		User Focus
3	Bulk Copy (BCP)			IT Focus
4	Business Objects		User and IT Focus	IT Focus
5	Cognos	User and IT Focus	User and IT Focus	IT Focus
6	Dundas	User and IT Focus	User and IT Focus
7	Data Transformation Services (DTS)			IT Focus
8	Hyperion Performance Suite	User and IT Focus
9	Informatica			IT Focus
10	Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services	IT Focus
11	Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services			IT Focus
12	Microsoft Office	User Focus	User Focus
13	Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services		User and IT Focus
14	Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server		User and IT Focus
15	Microstrategy	User and IT Focus
16	MISAG	User and IT Focus	User and IT Focus
17	Panorama	User and IT Focus	User and IT Focus
18	ProClarity		User and IT Focus
19	SoftArtisans		User Focus
20	WhereScape	IT Focus
20	SwiftKnowledge	IT Focus	User Focus	IT Focus
21	QlikView		User and IT Focus
22	Birst		User and IT Focus
23	Spotfire		User and IT Focus

If you are aware of additional Business Intelligence products in the market, please send an email to tips@mssqltips.com to include the product on this web page.

Next Steps

As you begin to learn about Business Intelligence for SQL Server, consider the tools listed in this tip as options to address your needs.
Most of these vendors have trial versions of their software that can be downloaded from their web site. So check them out to see if they meet your needs and offer you savings as you build your products.
Be sure to have a firm understanding of the BI needs to ensure the tools/technologies/products will best meet the needs.
Once you have a set of tools that you believe will meet the BI needs be sure to get the tool in the user's (IT or business) hands to receive validation from them that the tool will meet their needs from a people, process and technology perspective.

Updated: 11/10/2010

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Last Update: 12/14/2006

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Comments and Feedback:

Thursday, October 14, 2010 - 7:54:58 AM - Derric Raggs	Read The Tip
Business Objects also has an ETL tool called Data Intergrator

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