My SSIS Presentation.

I was demonstrating some of SSIS's capabilities to our Software Development Manager and VP of IS. (We are deciding which ETL tool to use for our DW project. So goes this project goes the house).They liked what they saw and were crazy over Fuzzy lookup but commented that SSIS seems very much oriented toward the programmer side of the house. It was, maybe, not the best tool for the Business analysts who are working closely with us on this project.

Any comments on their comment?

I wonder if SSIS "data source views" (which I haven't looked at at all) address their concerns?

Barkingdog

SSIS is a programmer/developer tool. All ETL tools are programmer/developer tools.

Exactly what do they want for the business analysts? SSIS is a platform for providing the data that business analysts may use - it is NOT something to be used by business analysts themselves.

-Jamie

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I know the Analysts are looking for a design tool they can use to create a Logical model of the warehouse. Later on the developers will convert the logical into a physical model. Since the analysts have a great understanding of the business implications of our data they will also be the ones completing the "Description" field of each field in the Data dictionary. I guess the company is looking for one product that can do all of this. (logical modeling, data dicitonary, let analysts get involved in the process, satisfy developer needs. They seem to think that the Sunopsis product I mentioned has better coverage of all these areas.)

Barkingdog

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I see. I've never seen Sunopsis but would be surprised if it has a logical data modelling tool. But hey, that's good to know.

Personally I use ERWin for this sort of stuff. I like the seperation of data modelling from implementation. To me, design and implementation are different disciplines and should be treated as such. That's just my opinion of course.

In response to your earlier question DSVs are not, in my opinion, a tool for data modelling. DSVs are something you build AFTER the physical model has been implemented. And before you have the physical model you have to build the logical model.

-Jamie

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It's worth noting that SQL Server does have exactly the capabilities you are seeking, barking - perhaps not quite in the way you have currently thought.

Analysis Services is the market leading tool for OLAP - which is, of course, a high performance architecture for delivering business analytics to end users.

In Analysis Services it is possible to build a cube - an analytic model - in a logical mode, then generate the physical model from that. These are called top-down cubes.

See: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174482.aspx and http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174883.aspx

hth

Donald