Building Business Intelligence Applications with .NET

Rating:
Summary: A Good Way to Get Started
Review: Businesses today are flooded with data. Everything, every transaction, every cash register produces floods of data. The problem is that the business manager needs to have information not just data. And this information needs to come from data that is scattered literally all over the world. It resides in various types of computer systems with various formats, various operating systems, and perhaps even in various languages.

Microsoft has approached this complex problem with their .NET concept. This book is on using the .NET concepts to bring this information together in a useable manner so that decisions can be made with some confidence that nothing major is being overlooked.

The basic concepts discussed include web services, data mining, statistical analysis, OLAP and SOAP/XML for conveying information between dissimilar systems. The book is aimed at the beginning to intermediate level developer. By beginning, this does not mean the complete novice, but one at least some experience to understanding the programming involved.


Rating:
Summary: Covers the most trivial basics
Review: This book is a major dissappointment. It covers only the most basic BI and .NET information. Information that is easily attainable from Microsoft documentation. Save your money. The author covers basics such as "How to create a cube" and "How to add a COM object to a .NET project". He then moves on to 'advanced' topics such as "How to open a connection" and then lists the Object model (as if I don't already have that information). He doesn't even discuss the loading of datagrids or working with charting controls. Much less anything about "drill to detail" functionality.

Rating:
Summary: Good coverage of Microsoft BI technologies
Review: This book is more about business intelliegence than .NET with most of the coverage focused on data warehousing, OLAP, reporting and data mining. If you need to build an application using any of those technologies on a Microsoft platform, you should consider this book.