Speaking the language of business intelligence with an Australian accent

Saturday, October 15, 2005

SSAS - New Data Mining book

Through the wonders of Amazon I have just received a copy of the recently-released "Data Mining with SQL Server 2005" by ZhaoHui Tang and Jamie MacLennan (waiting for new technical books to reach the Australian shelves is excruciating). It's always great to get books written by the people who actually built the product. Some may say that you don't get as objective a view as you would with a neutral author. Just the same you can be assured that there are no greater experts on that particular piece of technology. I'm really looking forward to reading this one. Data Mining really has taken a step up in this version and should not be ignored as many of us (esp. me) have done in the past.

At present I am not aware of any other significant sources of data mining material (pertaining to SQL 2005) that does not emanate from either Jamie, ZhaoHui or the rest of the MS Data Mining team. There's tons of great stuff (webcasts, white papers, sample code, tips & tricks etc. etc.) on their site. Jamie also has a blog. If anyone is aware of any DM bloggers or other sites I out there please let me know.

On the topic of SQL team members publishing books I can certainly recommend buying a copy of Donald Farmer's "Scripting SQL Server 2005 Integration Services" - a must for beginning a good SSIS reference library.

Also worth a read is The Scalability Experts' "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Changing the Paradigm". A great overall view of what is in the product at considerable depth. Lots of relevant, simple code examples and good explanations of new features. The BI components get several good size chapters but, of course, this is a book about the whole product.

There are many more good SQL 2005 books on the way...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Nick,
Can you recommend a good book on SSRS? I've just started learning SSRS but have been developing reports using other reporting tools for years. I'd appreciate any suggestions - thanks!
Jacque

Nick Barclay said...

Hi Jacque,
The two RS2000 books I would recommend are Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services by Peter Blackburn and William R. Vaugn and Microsoft Reporting Services in Action by Teo Lachev. Both great books.
There are not many SSRS 2005 books out there just yet, but they're coming. Reporting Services is young compared to the other 'services' because it was originally designed for 2005 only. Because the product was finished so early in the dev cycle (and was so good) MS thought it a wise to get it 'out there' and slotted it into SQL 2000; a great move on their part. Because of its age SSRS is the most unchanged SQL Server service when comparing 2000 to 2005 so reading books on the 2000 version will give you a very thorough grounding in preparation for the upcoming release.
Cheers,
Nick

Anonymous said...

Nick,
I am looking for a 2-3 day course on SSAS 2005 Data Mining. I want to go deeper into understanding the algorithms and how to set the parameters for each algorithm.

Nick Barclay said...

I am not aware of any course that concentrates solely on SQL 2005 data mining. Most BI courses will touch briefly on the subject but not to the depth you're looking for.

My best advice is to first get a copy of this book. There are no two better experts on the subject of DM in SQL Server than Jamie and Zao Hui. Also have a look at http://www.sqlserverdatamining.com/DMCommunity/ (run by the DM team at MS) for more data mining goodness.

Cheers,
Nick

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I have created a report model based upon an SSAS Cube and when I go to filters in the Report builder, I cannot see the list of data that is supposed to be shown in the dimensions. I had to type the values manually. How can I get the data automatically in the filters?