Comments on: SQL Server Kilimanjaro, Gemini announcements http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/10/project-kilimanjaro-gemini-announcements/ Your technology pain-relief experts. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:37:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: High Priests, Quakers, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Gemini « [No Title] http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/10/project-kilimanjaro-gemini-announcements/comment-page-1/#comment-6465 High Priests, Quakers, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Gemini « [No Title] Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:17:15 +0000 http://www.brentozar.com/?p=1390#comment-6465 [...] Brent Ozar [...] [...] Brent Ozar [...]

]]> By: Brent Ozar http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/10/project-kilimanjaro-gemini-announcements/comment-page-1/#comment-5894 Brent Ozar Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:34:33 +0000 http://www.brentozar.com/?p=1390#comment-5894 My opinion - and just take this for what it's worth - is that in the companies I've worked, the BI power consumers have their own data sources that the BI team doesn't even get access to. For example, we had a marketing team who had access to rapidly changing promotional data from a client, and they wanted to do sales mashups between the data warehouse and the client's advertising data. We couldn't put that client data into the warehouse because it changed too fast, wasn't really ours, and we didn't have the ETL resources to turn it into a process. The end result: the BI power consumers were slicing and dicing this stuff in Access, in Excel, and on an SSAS server they'd cobbled together out of an old laptop. Was the data right? Who knows, but we didn't have the time to build it, let alone vet it. That's the beauty of self-service BI. Actually, I'll write a blog post about that now that I'm thinking of it. My opinion – and just take this for what it’s worth – is that in the companies I’ve worked, the BI power consumers have their own data sources that the BI team doesn’t even get access to. For example, we had a marketing team who had access to rapidly changing promotional data from a client, and they wanted to do sales mashups between the data warehouse and the client’s advertising data. We couldn’t put that client data into the warehouse because it changed too fast, wasn’t really ours, and we didn’t have the ETL resources to turn it into a process.

The end result: the BI power consumers were slicing and dicing this stuff in Access, in Excel, and on an SSAS server they’d cobbled together out of an old laptop. Was the data right? Who knows, but we didn’t have the time to build it, let alone vet it.

That’s the beauty of self-service BI. Actually, I’ll write a blog post about that now that I’m thinking of it.

]]> By: David Stein http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/10/project-kilimanjaro-gemini-announcements/comment-page-1/#comment-5893 David Stein Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:23:35 +0000 http://www.brentozar.com/?p=1390#comment-5893 When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. The problem with users creating their own reports is that very few really know their databases intimately enough to be sure that they are getting accurate data. Or rather, getting data that really represents what they think it is. In my current position, I use Excel regularly for the reasons you mentioned. However, I (as the DBA) create the SQL statements and document them appropriately so the user gets the data they want. When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

The problem with users creating their own reports is that very few really know their databases intimately enough to be sure that they are getting accurate data. Or rather, getting data that really represents what they think it is.

In my current position, I use Excel regularly for the reasons you mentioned. However, I (as the DBA) create the SQL statements and document them appropriately so the user gets the data they want.

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