September 28, 2016 at 1:19 pm
I'm just wondering if it's worth pursuing that path or if I am stuck as a BI Business Analyst? I'd like to progress and have been following the MCSE BI track along with performing some of this type of work, SSAS cubes, tabulars, SSIS, MDX etc.....
Can you really be an effective BI professional without C# development skills? The most programming skills I possess is VBA at an intermediate level, :hehe:
My fears is I work hard to get my BI MCSE and I become a fraud or I am at a MAJOR disadvantage because of the lack of my front end development skills.
Thanks for any heads up on this matter or opinions....
Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 - Certified
September 28, 2016 at 3:29 pm
Most front end BI I see is done in tools like Tableau, Power BI, SISENSE, SSRS... So I guess i'm confused why you would need to be strong in C# ?:-D
***SQL born on date Spring 2013:-)
September 28, 2016 at 3:42 pm
Script task use in SSIS is one area that you can leverage development language.
Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 - Certified
September 28, 2016 at 3:53 pm
patrick.w.wheeler (9/28/2016)
Script task use in SSIS is one area that you can leverage development language.
You don't always need to use C# scripting tasks, especially not for reporting tools. About the only time I've used it is for calling web services. If you already know SSIS or SSRS, then you've probably already learned it's own expression language, so picking up a little C# is not that big of a deal. There are plenty of examples covering specific tasks that can be Googled. Actually, I would say that the best BI professionals I've ever met had no background in application programming; they were just smart subject matter experts who knew how to use BI tools and who picked up enough scripting along the way to get by.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
September 28, 2016 at 8:08 pm
Can you really be an effective BI professional without C# [or front-end] development skills?
YES.
I've been a BI Developer/Architect/Consultant for ~7 years and I am a total .NET language novice. Front end development isn't Business Intelligence anyhow, it's programming IMHO. BI involves designing and developing data warehouses and OLAP cubes for consumption by reporting systems. If you can become a SSAS and MDX pro you'll have an easy time getting BI work.
T-SQL - that is a skill you need grow if you're going to be a BI Developer. Bad SQL (something I make a living cleaning up) ruins your BI system. Bad SQL is often why SSRS reports are slow, SSIS packages choke and SSAS cube processing takes forever.
A final piece of advice: I had a solid understanding of XML before becoming a BI Developer. This skill is not vital to becoming a BI Developer but it was very helpful and gave me a huge advantage and still does today. SSRS, Cognos and Tableau reports are XML files. So are SSIS packages. MDX and XMLA is based on XML. Heck, even .NET languages are based on XML. That's my $0.02.
Edit: tiny typo.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
September 28, 2016 at 8:41 pm
Just my thoughts.
Front-end with BI refers to the front-end applications used for reporting. This includes tools like SSRS, Tableau, Microstrategy and even Excel. Learning to develop in those tools are critical. If they involve you learning a scripting language like VBA for Excel, then that makes perfect sense for a BI developer/architect to learn.
One thing to note, R and Python are becoming integrated pieces with those front-end tools. Ignoring those languages could hinder your ability to be a good BI professional in the future. If you asked me if learning them is critical to the future of BI, I would tell you absolutely they are. Learn both if not just one.
Finally, I would disagree that programming or scripting for the backend with other languages not SQL is limiting to BI developers/architects. I only say that because I am very much against the guys who live in their square boxes relying heavily on SSIS, SSAS and SSRS to do everything. ETL is very much beyond SSIS. It's a system the involves many components both SSIS and non-SSIS. If you're working in those areas, knowing how to leverage more than one technology to develop all those components is extremely important.
I truly do believe learning more than those tools is critical to BI in the future because data platforms and environments are really evolving outside those boxes. For example, working with NoSQL, API's, machine learning and more.
September 29, 2016 at 9:23 am
I really do appreciate the great insight, this IMO is relatively new career field at least I am not seeing as much on it as some of the other fields. My primary role is a data stewart (from definition). I generally maintain our data warehouse, including updates and inserts into our tables, but recently ~6 months ago have started developing tabular models, SSIS packages for ETL, agent jobs for automation, and even some time series mining structures, using ARIMA, ARTXp and the Mixed algorithm. Clearly not as senior as you guys/gals, but feel I have the aptitude and passion to continue down this path.
Like I said earlier, probably out of insecurity, I am a little nervous to get into this career field with my lack of programming skills, but that seems to be debunked by the series of threads in this post.
Someone mentioned SQL, I certainly have at least intermediate skills, windowing, derived tables, CTE's etc. I have begin to learn DMX to extract data from our mining structure to flatten into our relation dart mart for procurement analysis.
Sorry to be long winded but I wanted to get it out there. I'm hoping to work through the BI track from Microsoft to eventually become something more than a Business Analyst who impersonated a BI professional.
Thanks.
Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 - Certified
October 21, 2016 at 6:58 am
You can do ETL and SSIS without C# or other language skills, but eventually you will need to know some programming beyond TSQL.
October 28, 2016 at 1:32 pm
if you're looking for front end skills woudln't you be better learning how to code i.e. the structure of code and how to implment structred maintainable code and not concentrating on a specific language. Once you have these core skills its much easy to learn the syntax of a particular language
October 28, 2016 at 4:03 pm
Alan.B (9/28/2016)
T-SQL - that is a skill you need grow if you're going to be a BI Developer. Bad SQL (something I make a living cleaning up) ruins your BI system. Bad SQL is often why SSRS reports are slow, SSIS packages choke and SSAS cube processing takes forever
+1000 to that!
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
November 22, 2016 at 7:41 am
Follow up to this insightful post.
It's been a few months and I feel my SQL has gotten stronger, for ~2 years it was decent and now it's really move up a notch. Let say pre this post I was at a 4 out of a 10, and I am talking the top of the tops are 9's and 10's most people never get to those levels. I am now at least a solid 5 - 5.5, Far beyond basic joins, sub queries etc.
I've recently created a full end to end solution predicting volume forecasting. We have another in the works and this is soup to nuts, SQL query, SSAS mining structure, SSIS to bring it into a flat file, manipulation as seen fit then finally ending up into a BO report or Power Bi, depending on the granularity of the data.
I still have a ways to go...... Been focusing on stats more recently and the use of R. Still a total green bean.....
Any way thanks for all the great info, it helped me in more than one way.
Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012/2014 - Certified
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