Business Intelligence Markup Language - SQL Server Integration Services Design Patterns - page 448

dex ) . I believe this is enough to whet your appetite while I am demonstrating the
power of Biml.
A Brief History of Business Intelligence
Markup Language
In early 2007, the Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) business incubated a
new approach to building business intelligence (BI) solutions. As the organization re-
sponsible for managing all frontline customer support interactions, CSS has significant
analytical and predictive needs—across data from a wide variety of sources. To accel-
erate the development of its internal solutions, CSS began developing the Vulcan pro-
ject, which used an XML-based markup language to describe a subset of SISS pack-
ages. This created a model where business intelligence solutions could be developed
more rapidly and iteratively by globally distributed teams of BI developers.
After a period of significant success building new BI capabilities, the CSS and the
SQL Server product team decided to publish the source code for the Vulcan project on
CodePlex to enable customers to try the technology and begin building a community
around it ( http://vulcan.codeplex.com ) . Feedback from customers showed
that they recognized that the approach was powerful and promising, but that the imple-
mentation reflected the project's status as an internal tool used to accelerate an opera-
tional delivery team. Without documentation and training resources, usability consider-
ations, and additional features, the cost of adopting Vulcan was prohibitive for all but
the most determined customers.
In late 2008, Scott Currie, who worked with the Vulcan technology in CSS, foun-
ded Varigence, Inc. Varigence created the Business Intelligence Markup Language
(Biml), along with tools to enable its design and development. Although Biml didn't
directly use any code or technology from Vulcan, the approach taken by the Vulcan
project inspired the Varigence team to build Biml as an XML-based markup language
with rapid, iterative global team development capabilities in mind.
Biml is now available in proprietary products and open source projects and has
been published as an open language specification. Varigence has developed a Biml
compiler that enables a wide variety of automation and multitargeting capabilities. Ad-
ditionally, Varigence offers an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Biml
called Mist. Mist enables rapid and visual design and debugging features for Biml. The
open source BIDS Helper project includes Biml functionality, enabling anyone to write
and execute Biml code for free.