Microsoft boosts BI

Microsoft is bolstering BI and reporting features in both the existing SQL Server 2000 database and the planned SQL Server 2005 release.

The company has been focused on improving BI in SQL Server for the past few years. Tuesday’s announcements link applications such as Exchange and CRM to the company’s BI fray.

Available now for free, SQL Server Report Packs for Exchange Server and CRM enhance the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services function by providing templates of commonly used reports for users to modify for their own custom reports, according to Microsoft. These particular templates would supplement the Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft CRM 1.2 systems. Reports that be developed include one that would gauge who has the largest Exchange e-mail folder or who is sending and receiving the largest set of e-mail.

“Customers want to build reports off of Exchange,” said Alex Payne, senior product manager for SQL Server at Microsoft. “We’ve done the heavy lifting for them. We’re providing the templates.”

Microsoft also said it has begun shipping Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) with SQL Server Reporting Services. The company is providing sets of reports based on Reporting Services for use with MOM. Additionally, the Visual Studio 2005 development tool due next year will feature reporting controls that can be embedded to more easily build applications with SQL Server Reporting Services.

Data Transformation Services, an ETL engine that has been part of SQL Server 2000, will be renamed SQL Server Integration Services and will feature extended extraction, transformation, and loading capabilities and the ability to consume Web services and load them into a database. Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services will be included in SQL Server 2005 next year.

Also, the ActiveViews technology Microsoft acquired for ad hoc reporting will be renamed Reporting Services Report Builder and will be part of SQL Server 2005. It will debut in a third beta release of SQL Server 2005 set for release at the end of this year.

SQL Server Analysis Services, which ships as an OLAP and data mining engine in SQL Server, will be enhanced next year to feature new data mining algorithms and clustering of data. Algorithms cover functions including classification, regression, segmentation, association, and forecasting as well as text mining and sequence analysis.

Also being added to SQL Server Analysis Services is the ability to develop key performance indicators in the engine, such calculating day sales at a retailer.