SOLUTION BRIEF
3 SQL Server 2016 Features
to Help Business Analysis Teams Achieve Greatness
70% Enterprise projects that do not succeed1, and IT Web pointed out that business analytics capabilities are increasingly necessary in ensuring success.2 Rising IT complexity and a growing need for business-IT alignment are coming together to make projects more complex than ever. Business Analysis (BA) professionals can empower organizations to prepare for projects as effectively as possible by getting information to the right people in a timely fashion. Microsoft SQL Server 2016 can play a critical role in supporting BA leaders as they work to integrate data into everyday operations, with three specific features standing out along the way:
1. Policy Enforcement Giving business users the ability to gather, use, and analyze information can be invaluable in helping teams plan projects, set goals, and maximize the value of the data at their fingertips. However, doing so opens up new risk as organizations must carefully control how data moves between different user groups. BA professionals can resolve many problems by establishing clear policies and procedures that govern how data is managed and
used. Enforcing those policies, however, can be a thorn in even the most vigilant BA professional’s heel. SQL Server 2016 has been built to eliminate many of these difficulties by integrating policy enforcement and rule compliance into the underlying database engine.3 With this functionality in place, BA leaders can fine-tune: • Settings for key database tasks, such as auto close, auto shrink, page verification and collation processes. • Authorization settings for various internal user groups, such as managing password policies, and even guest permissions. • Rules for backup process completion and how they will be documented. • Alerts and parameters for event log notifications. Managing policies doesn’t have to be a burden as BA professionals can use pre-built rules and permissions to simplify internal compliance.
2. Streamlining Analytics Getting meaningful insights from data often requires incredibly time-consuming analysis and data mining. This is especially true as BA leaders must balance information that is relevant for immediate use with historic data that must be leveraged for strategic analysis. A Network World report delving into this challenge explained that
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SOLUTION BRIEF: 3 SQL Server 2016 Features to Help Business Analysis Teams Achieve Greatness (continued)
the Slowly Changing Dimension (SDC) tool within SQL Server can combine with Temporal Tables to make it easier to define different data types and mix-and-match historic and recent data to ensure information is handled accurately in immediate and short-term use cases.4 According to the report, Temporal Tables provide automated track changes to allow BA professionals to easily balance different sets of information without having to sacrifice quality. As a result, it becomes much easier to analyze data sets for a wide array of purposes. In practice, this functionality enables BA professionals to look at data sets and automatically adjust the rules for processing and analyzing that information based on specific time parameters, making it easier to complete a variety of analysis types without sacrificing quality or manually adjusting data.
that users can use the reporting tool within SQL Server 2016 to create custom reports. From there, the system allows you to pin the visualizations from those reports into the Power BI dashboard. With reports on the dashboard, users can access that data regardless of which device type they are using, letting them integrate information into everyday processes. The Power BI Dashboards automatically update as the data behind the custom reports change. In response, end users always have up-to-date information to inform their decisions. With these tools in hand, BA professionals can provide a solid foundation for decision-making across the business.
Driving Business Success Through BA Processes BA professionals can’t single-handedly change a business, but they can give users across the enterprise the data and analysis needed to make better choices day-in, day-out. Increased business complexity can leave individuals at every level of a company staggering under a large number of complicated choices, but BA professionals can simplify those decisions through effective data management and integration in the background.
3. Customizable Dashboards Empowering users with data is easier if that information is easily accessible to them. This is where end-user dashboards become an invaluable asset, and SQL Server 2016 features custom reporting tools that make dashboards especially valuable.5 A Microsoft blog post explained
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 offers features to help in this area, and Learning Tree can provide the training organizations need to take full advantage of BA functionality in SQL Server.
CA1701 SQLBA
Sources: 1 http://4pm.com/project-failure/ 2 http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=157014 3 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645723.aspx 4 http://www.networkworld.com/article/2983248/microsoft-subnet/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-microsoft-sql-server-2016.html 5 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2015/10/28/pin-reporting-services-charts-to-power-bi-dashboards-with-sql-server-2016-ctp-3-0/?wt.mc_id=WW_CE_DM_OO_BLOG_NONE
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