I could not talk about business intelligence and Microsoft tools not mentioning Marco Russo and Albert Ferrari. Both have contributed greatly to help simplify complex problems in architecture and methodologies for complex problems. The discussion was launched few months ago in my personal blog and in the official blog. Please take a look, because it will be very helpful if you are looking to implement better methodologies and architectures.

I highlight three works from Marco and Albert that you should not miss:

1. Introduction to the SQLBI Methodology

This is the first paper about the SQLBI Methodology; it introduces the SQLBI Methodology architecture, comparing it to Inmon and Kimball methodologies. I made several questions to Marco and Albert that they kindly answered me in my blog. I also suggested a few changes... join the discussion and help Marco and Albert to make an even better work.

2. SQLBI Methodology at work

It provides a complete data model and ETL of data coming from the well known "Adventure Works" and put into practice the methodology described in by them in the "Introduction to the SQL BI Methodology". I've not read this paper yet, but I will surely do it soon.

3. The Many to Many Revolution

There is also a fantastic book publish with a symbolic price of 5 € (Euros) about advanced dimensional modeling. It’s an interesting book that describes real world problems

 “Analysis Services 2005 (SSAS 2005) introduced the capability to handle many-to-many relationships between dimensions. At a first glance, you may tend to underscore the importance of this feature: after all, Analysis Services 2000 and many other OLAP engines do not offer many-to-many relationships. Yet, its lack did not limit their adoption and, apparently, only a few businesses really require it. However, as this paper shows, the UDM (Unified Dimensional Model) can leverage many-to-many relationships helping you to present data from different perspectives that are not feasible with a traditional star schema. This opens a brand new world of opportunities that transcends the limits of traditional OLAP. We will explore many different uses of many-to-many relationships that give us more choices to model effectively business needs.”

Visit them at here and also visit the discussion at my blog at here

I hope this article be useful to you. Pedro