April 11, 2015 at 9:54 pm
Hey,
I'm at a bit of a crossroads in my career, and was always interested in MSBI and the BI stack, MDX, Tabular model etc. Learnt some it, but never managed to make the leap from DBA.
So I look on LinkedIn, and I keep seeing positions for Tableau, SAS and all these things, but not a lot for analysis services, cube development etc., I was interested in anyone's opinion as to whether there was in real value (or money), left in the MS space anymore, or is it just saturated with MSBI talent now? Not sure if this the right place for this kind of discussion, but thought most of the relevant people would be here.
Interested in any and all opinions on this. Thank you.
Regards,
D.
April 11, 2015 at 11:44 pm
I would imagine there is. Kind of depends on how good you are at SSIS, SSAS and sometimes SSRS. Ask Koen... he does it every day.
April 11, 2015 at 11:54 pm
pietlinden (4/11/2015)
I would imagine there is. Kind of depends on how good you are at SSIS, SSAS and sometimes SSRS. Ask Koen... he does it every day.
Further on pietlinden's reply, it may not be the lowest hanging fruit but there is definitely potential value in MSBI knowledge. One thing to keep in mind though is that BI is not just the application of the technologies, it is very much about the business knowledge.
😎
April 11, 2015 at 11:59 pm
and it takes a fair amount of time to learn... =) Not to be a wet blanket, but you get out what you put in.
April 12, 2015 at 5:48 pm
I couldn't agree more, but it's tough to get into with limited experience, and after the effort it would be a kick in the nuts if everyone has started using something else. You only get one life and if I'm going to spend time away from the family to learn something new, there needs to be a payoff for the time spent away from them. As im sure most people would understand that.
Regards,
D.
April 12, 2015 at 6:35 pm
If you have a copy of Office Professional Plus, then you can do a bunch of stuff with DAX and PowerPivot. Check out Kasper de Jonge and Rob Collie's websites for that stuff. I have Rob Collie's book (and several others) on DAX/PowerPivot. If that kind of thing interests you, dive in. If you combine Analysis Services / a data warehouse (or just a regular OLTP database), you can do some really cool stuff in Excel.
Honestly there are several books:
Ferrari & Russo - Building PowerPivot Models in Excel 2013 (fair amount of theoretical stuff)
Dan Clark's book (intro to Power BI) - pretty good
Art Tennick - Practical PowerPivot & DAX Formulas for Excel 2010 (very dry, but some good stuff on calculations (Rob's book is a much easier and engaging read).
Rob Collie - DAX Formulas for PowerPivot.
If you're a beginner, start with Dan Clark's book and Rob Collie's book. I think Rob just finished a sequel/update that he did with Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel). I have Jelen's book on PowerPivot too. Didn't like it.
Sorry, lots of opinion, but there it is.
April 12, 2015 at 6:44 pm
Thanks for those excellent references, I'm finishing up an upgrade from mcitp 2008 to 2012, then I was going to hit data warehousing in more detail (part of the upgrade is implementing dw), then expert cube dev and mdx, I was then going for DAX and the ssas tab model. I enjoy those technologies, I just hope it's worth it, for me personally your post was literally on the money! Thank you.
Regards,
D.
April 12, 2015 at 6:59 pm
Here's the cool thing with DAX. You don't need a "proper" data warehouse. it works better if you have one, but it's not necessary. There are a bunch of articles about PowerPivot around the web. Honestly, I would start with Rob Collie's book on PowerPivot & DAX. Might look like a coloring book, but they guy knows his stuff. He also has a bunch of videos on YouTube that are well worth checking out.
Once you understand the basics of a data warehouse, DAX is really cool. I'm relatively new it it all, but one thing you can do is create views in SQL Server and then link to those views in PowerPivot. Bottom line: you can use T-SQL/Windowing functions in your views and then filter the results in PowerPivot. It's really cool. Takes a little bit to get your head around how DAX works, but you don't need it for super basic PowerPivot (Dan Clark's book is good if you have 2013). The problem with Excel 2010 is that you don't have PowerView (for dashboard-type UI's) and no PowerMap. But you can get an eval copy of Office Pro Plus.
Honestly, I'm still trying to work out what to do where (which parts of the solution to implement in Excel and which in SQL Server). Check your local Excel/BI User Group and see what folks there are doing. Great place for picking people's brains!
Sorry, missed a reference:
April 13, 2015 at 1:50 am
Duran (4/11/2015)
So I look on LinkedIn, and I keep seeing positions for Tableau, SAS and all these things, but not a lot for analysis services, cube development etc., I was interested in anyone's opinion as to whether there was in real value (or money), left in the MS space anymore, or is it just saturated with MSBI talent now? Not sure if this the right place for this kind of discussion, but thought most of the relevant people would be here.
The reason you are seeing so much positions for Tableau, SAS and other tools is because of what is hyped right new: "visual analytics", "data science", "predictive analytics" and so on.
It doesn't mean though that "traditional" BI has lost its value. And the people who claim otherwise, will bang their heads against the wall very soon.
When I look around at my local job market, there's still enough positions for MS BI experts.
I'd still take a look at Power BI though, just to diversify a bit. (and maybe Tableau, because it's a cool product but it serves a more analytical audience).
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MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP
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