To Sharepoint BI or not to Sharepoint BI

  • Over the past few years my colleagues and I have been able to bulild a fairly robust business intelligence and reporting platform using SQL Server technologies. In fact, we have just recently upgraded to the SQL 2008 suite of products (DBS, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS). What a great product!!!

    We are pretty much satisfied with the backend processes for our ETL and data storage, but we lack a centralized method of delivering reports. We have a hodgepodge of Excel worksheets, Reporting Services reports and ProClarity books all located in different places. We rely most heavily on reporting services, but do not like the end user interface that much.

    I've begun looking at Sharepoint 2007 and some of its dashboard and business data capabilities. Does anyone here have experience with setting up a BI presentation layer using Sharepoint? What are the pros and cons? I do not currently own Sharepoint 2007.

    Alternatively....

    If you had the resources available to develop your own web "portal" in .NET to tailor a website to your business users, would you write a custom website over a full Sharepoint installation?

    What would my peers on SQLServerCentral do?

  • I've been hearing this stetement so many times. MS got a first class quality OLAP and ETL for BI (see http://www.olapreport for market share data), but lack of BI Front End.

    Let me explain first about MS BI strategy. For the back end MS relied on SQL Server (no complain about this) and for the front end there are several products such as MS Excel, SSRS, and Performance Point Server 2007 (too bad this product discontinued early 2009). PPS will merge into MOSS since the release of MOSS 2010. Right now? I guess MS only left customer to choose between MS Excel and SSRS.

    What about next year? I suggest you move to MOSS because of the release of SQL Server 2008 R2. The front end client will be Gemini Adds In for SQL Server, a lite engine of SQL Server in MS Excel (this is what MS called Self Service BI). Anybody can create their own BI with Gemini. Once the result published, the only way to access those reports is using MOSS 2010.

    Another products? I frequently review Strategy Companion's products (www.strategycompanion.com) and use Data Micron - a Cognos identical product (www.datamicron.com) in some of my projects.

  • Sharepoint BI is def one of the best.

    With SQL server 2008 R2 and Sharepoint 2010 you get alot though.

    if you need more info let me know.

    Patrick

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