Introduction to Report Developer Role

1. Microsoft BI User Group
Business Intelligence Developers Role

2. Jon Bloom
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Bloom Consulting (Independent Consultant)
http://www.bloomconsultingbi.com/
Reporting since 1991
Twitter: @SQLJon

3. What is BI Reporting?
• You start with a BI Developer.
• He/she basically converts raw materials, the Data, into a
product, Information.

4. Meet with Customers
The BI Developer meets with the customer to
define the purpose of the report.
• What is the purpose of the Report Request?
• What question is the customer trying to
answer?

5. Business Side
The BI Developer must know the Business side of
the Report.
• How many widgets were created in the month of
June?
• How much revenue did that generate?
• What was the same production of widgets last
year?
• The past 5 years?
• Can I see the graphical representation?

6. Gather Specs
The BI Developer must gather the Report Specification.
• What would you like the end product to look like?
• In what format would you like the final report (PDF,
Excel)?
• What parameters would you like to be able to search?
• How often would you like the report delivered?
• Do you want to see Summed up data and/or Detailed
data?
• How should the Report be Sorted?

7. Estimate Time
The BI Developer must determine Time and
Resources to create the Report.
• Need to estimate the length of time to
complete the Report request.
• It's good practice to write up the Report Specs
in an SDLC document.
• The Customer should review, agree and sign
the SDLC document.

8. Data Side
The BI Developer must know the data side of the
Report.
• Determine where does this data reside?
• What Database Server?
• What Database Name?
• What UserID/Password is available for Reporting?
• What Tables / Views / Stored Procedures are
available?
• Are there any existing reports to leverage from?

9. Technology Side
The BI Developer must know the technology side of the
Report.
• Create the Data Source query in either SQL or Stored
Procedure.
• Add the Data Source to the Report.
• Add Header/Footer to the Report.
• Add the Database Fields to the Report.
• Add Parameters to the Report.
• Add Groups, Customer Fields, Sums, Counts, Average to the
Report.
• Add Charts/Graphs to the Report.

10. Change Management
The BI Developer must know the company procedures for
Change Management for new Reports.
• The Report Specifications must be documented by the BI
Developer.
• The Report must be verified by either Quality Assurance or
the Customer.
• A Release date must be established for the new Report.
• The Report Release must be scheduled with the Change
Manager.
• The Customer and Key Stake Holders must be notified of the
Report Release.
• The actual Report and Stored Procedure must be moved to
Production.

11. Report Delivery
The BI Developer must know how to deliver the
Report.
• Once approved, the Report is added to the
Web/Portal in a specified Folder.
• The Permissions are set for specific Users on
the Report.
• Automated Subscriptions can be added to the
Report.

12. Troubleshoot Report
The BI Developer must know how to troubleshoot
the Report.
• Once the Report is in Production, if any bugs are
found they must be troubleshot and corrected.
• The Server Log Files are useful for troubleshooting
Failed Generated Reports.
• If the accuracy of the Data is in question, the BI
Developer can view the SQL and/or Report.

13. Close Ticket
The BI Developer must close out the Request.
• The Report should be stored off in a Source Code
Repository.
• The Report Documentation should be stored in an
accessible place.
• The Customer should sign off on the Project that
it was completed and accurate and within budget.
• The Customer's Cost Center should be charged for
the BI Developer's time if applicable.

14. Universal
• The above information is generic enough that
it doesn't apply to just one vendor (ie, Crystal
Reports, SSRS, Actuate, Cognos, etc.), it
applies to all BI Report Developers.

15. Business Intelligence
• Business Intelligence is about solving
problems.
About providing insight.
And guiding actions.
If you as a developer can do all three, you will
be a success.

16. Evolution
• Reporting has been around for a while.

17. Mainframe
• Back on the Mainframe / AS400, people were
writing batch reports for over 30 years, some
are still doing it.

18. Relational Database
• Then along came the Relational Database
with the definition being: "is a collection of
data items organized as a set of formally
described tables from which data can be
accessed easily"

19. 4th Generation Languages
• So then there were 4th generational
languages which allow the developer to easily
connect to a database, apply the necessary
joins, without having know much about SQL.

20. Data Warehouse
•
Then came the Data Warehouse, which stores
data for reporting and analysis. Data was
denormalized for quick access with slicing and
dicing the dimensions and measures for multi
level dissection and drill down using a
language called MDX, which is a query
language for OLAP databases.

21. Discovery
• Because of time delays and complexity involved, users
began to demand faster access to their data, delivered
in a variety of formats, for consumption in near real
time.
Which gave rise to a new breed of reporting such as
Tableau, QlikView and Microsoft version Power Pivot.
These new tools allow a business user, not necessarily
IT people, to rapidly connect to a data source, pull data
in, join the data, see their data, then deploy to other
users, Power Point or web interfaces with permissions
almost instantly.

22. Advanced BI
• Users can create stunning visualizations
including Dashboards which drill down, drill
through, color graphics, dynamically adjust
based on Slicers and Pivots. With other tools
such as Performance Point which usually
require a developer, Balanced Scorecards are
now common place with Key Performance
Indicators KPI to quickly draw attention
visually to points of interest on the Scorecard.

23. Mobile BI
• Users don't always stay put. And by that they
sometimes are on the golf course, at the air
port, at home, sometimes connected to the
VPN other times not. Reports still need to
handle this feature. A lot of Reporting
solutions offer some type of Mobile access,
through portals such as Microsoft SharePoint.

24. Hadoop
• Next step in the evolution of Reporting is a sub-set of
Big Data, called Hadoop. This type of system uses
thousands of low end servers to host enormous
amounts of data, mostly un-structured, as in nonrelational. Basically a central controller replicates 3
copies of every item to a variety of servers, which self
regenerate if corrupt, and the data gets widdled down
to key, element pairs, which can then be queries on in
batch queries. The concept is quite powerful and has
been around for some time, although because of the
reduction in costs of hardware and software and
developer time, it has entered the mainstream.

25. Artificial Intelligence
•
Another intersection of Reporting and Data and Big
Data is the advent of Artificial Intelligence. The goal of
AI is to simulate a human cognitive brain, that
understands vast amounts of information, can query in
real time, can understand human speech and thought
patterns, as well as fragmented speech that is regional
or specific to circumstances, etc. If you've seen Space
Odyssey series, you may be familiar with the computer
character HAL, move each digit 1 letter (IBM), although
the real version IBMWatson seems to be a lot friendlier
and can win on Jeopardy.

26. Future looks Bright for BI
• So as you can see, Reporting has been here for
a while, has changed somewhat over time,
and will continue to grow and expand in the
future.

27. THANK YOU!
• http://www.bloomconsultingbi.com/2011/06/
business-intellgience-report-developer.html
• http://www.bloomconsultingbi.com/