Database Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 3
The Microsoft Toolset
Microsoft was a late entry to the visualization market. Although it had a strong
and early entry to the online analytical processing (OLAP) market, for the most
part it relied on third-party vendors to do the front-end work and focused in
the early days on the database work, allowing vendors such as Panorama and
Proclarity to take the lead. More recently, as Microsoft wanted to take more
control of the market, it started to develop and buy more of the front-end
toolset. Microsoft's purchase of Proclarity and later Report Builder marked
a strong entry into the front-end market, but it was paralleled by a strong
independent entry in the form of both strengthening the Excel visualization
tools and developing a tool called Business Scorecard Manager (BSM), which
evolved into PerformancePoint and was eventually subsumed into SharePoint
as PerformancePoint services. Reporting Services, originally aimed squarely
at the technical user from a developers' point of view, has evolved into a self-
service tool aimed at the business user. In this chapter, you find out about the
history of the Microsoft toolset and discover how each tool fits in the tool bag.
Microsoft purchased
Report Builder 1 from
Active View, and later
purchased a product
called Radius from
90 degree software
that became part of
Report Builder 2.
A BRIeF HISToRy
The history of Microsoft's business intelligence (BI) toolset is in two parts: the
history of the analytic tools is first and begins with Microsoft's purchase of
the OLAP engine from Panorama, which happened in 1996. In the initial days,
Microsoft focused on building SQL Server, and allowing third-party vendors
such as Panorama and Proclarity to build the front-end tools. The chart in
Figure 3-1 shows the release versions for each analytic database. It's impor-
tant to note that even the analytic databases embedded in SharePoint and in
Office are in fact developed by the SQL team and, more importantly, require
a separate installation. Read more about the evolution of these products in
the “Database Tools” section.
