Is it possible to teach myself Analysis Services and then claim to be a
Junior Data Warehouse guy? I've been a DBA for 4+ years now and have no
experience with these tools. Is learning from a book just like everything
else, not very realistic?

TIA, ChrisR

Completely realistic and possible. Go for it.
"ChrisR" <noemail (AT) bla (DOT) com> wrote

A little but:

AS isn't just a technical excersice - you need to get a grasp on the
business issues....when you see the ligth of using an olap frontend such as
pivot etc you get a better idea of how to use the backend tehnology
(hierachies, actions, drillthrough, mdx)


"ChrisR" <noemail (AT) bla (DOT) com> wrote

Hi Chris,
if you want to be a 'DW Guy' (claimed or for real) feel free to check
out my personal site www.peternolan.com.

There are a lot of papers, presentations FAQs, and pointers to good
books which will start you on you way. There is even published code of
all the processing required to build large dimensional data warehouses
as well as a free version of an ETL tool we used to use in the 90s. (It
is free because it has been made redundant by the next version.)

My opinion:

My personal opinion is learning AS has nothing to do with 'becoming a
DW guy'......my opinion is that by learning AS you would be 'a DBA who
knows AS'.

Almost surprisingly, I am yet to use AS in a real project......I have
used other cube products such as Cognos and Essbase.....(At one time I
held the uneviable record of designing the worlds largest
implementation of a single implementation of Essbase at 500 concurrent
users to a single essbase instance.)

There is much more to DWing and BI than a 'cube database' or even a
'reporting tool'.

DWing/BI is not about technology and it never has been.....it is only
the technology people who think BI is abount technology....

When I look at the words BI I see 'Business' and 'Intelligence' I don't
see IT... ;-)

I believe the most valuable people on a BI project are those that
understand the business.

The people who understand the tools such as AS can be hired as
'outsourced developers' from places like India/China/Russia for very
low rates. People in the west simply cannot compete on rates with that
group of 'outsourced developers'.

Like I said, just my opinion... ;-)

Best Regards....

Peter Nolan
www.peternolan.com