Microsoft Business Intelligence For Dummies covers the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack by including coverage all of the current technologies and buzzwords and then showing how they fit together for an effective strategy to solve business problems. When discussing Microsoft BI, the most common technologies used are: SharePoint - Microsoft is continually putting SharePoint at the top of the stack with things like Excel Services, SQL Server Reporting Services integration, Dashboards, KPI's, and it was announced last week that the PerformancePoint technology will be rolled into SharePoint and will be called SharePoint PerformancePoint Services. The SQL Server suite of products - including SQL Server Database Engine, Integration Services, Reporting Services, Analysis Services. Microsoft Office Suite - especially Excel since Microsoft has included functionality to use Excel as a client to do Data Mining. Excel connects to the backend Analysis Services engine and is part of SharePoint with Excel Services. PerformancePoint - which, as mentioned above, will be rolled into SharePoint. BI development technologies - including Visual Studio, Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) which is basically Visual Studio with functionality for BI, Management Studio, Report Builder 2.0, SharePoint Designer, and Expression Web.All of these BI stack elements are enabled by technologies such as DataWarehousing, Data Marts, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Data Mining, Reporting, Dashboards, and Key Performance Indicators, as well as ERP systems that computerize business such as the Microsoft Dynamics suite (GP, NAV, AX, SL, CRM). At the infrastructure level of the stack is Windows Server Operating System and its components such as Internet Information Services (IIS). There are many books on the market that delve deep into the details of particular technologies; however, many managers, developers, and even CIO's want more information about how all of these technologies work together to solve problems in the enterprise. This book focuses on the functional problems that Business Intelligence solves and will then introduce the technologies that solve these problems. It takes the guesswork out of Microsoft Business Intelligence by explaining what each of the technologies are, what their overall functions are, and how they fit together and work to provide the most efficient BI process and strategy.