Next SQL Server Includes a New Business Intelligence Layer

A future preview release of SQL Server “Denali,” first delivered Nov. 2010, will ship important new components for business intelligence (BI). BI is a catch-all term for the process of deriving business trends and decisions from operational data stores (such as sales orders or customer support events) by summarizing multiple data points. Denali will enable broader BI adoption by providing a simplified development model, building upon concepts first introduced with PowerPivot for Excel, while continuing to provide the existing development model used for SQL Server BI applications today.

Analysis Services in Focus for Denali

Denali will include updates to SQL Server Analysis Services, a key component of Microsoft’s BI technologies. Analysis Services hosts specialized databases organized to enable fast analysis of large volumes of data, designed to provide visibility into the data at various levels of detail. For example, an Analysis Services database might store several years of historical sales data from a company’s customer relationship management and accounting systems. This data could be analyzed in order to plan marketing campaigns or identify cross-selling or upgrade opportunities.