How to learn SSIS / SSAS / SSRS / Data Warehousing and start a career in Microsoft Business Intelligence

I often get queries regarding career guidance, from my blog readers or from readers who follow articles authored by me. These readers are mostly BI aspirants or those who feel saturation in their present working area like .NET or DBA or SQL Developer work profile. Also some female readers do ask me that they have not been working after starting a family for a while (couple of years) and now they are in need to start a job and they want to start a career in microsoft business intelligence.

Some of the common questions that I often get to hear from readers are as below, and in public interest I would try to answer these questions. I remain / remained on the interview panel at Capgemini Mumbai for screening candidates on my relevant skills, but the below views are strictly and completely my personal views and has nothing to do with the view of my employer.

1) How to start a career in MS BI and what to learn - SSIS / SSAS / SSRS ?

If you are facing this question when you are starting your fresh career, it's not in your hand. The reason is that when one joins an organization as a fresher, one does not have enough liberty to choose the technology one wishes to work as the company is investing on the candidate to train him/her and then assign a project. Also freshers generally are not billed to the client, so the billing productivity is almost zero for at least an year. Still, I suggest to keep learning these technology and always keep your resource management aware of your desire and readiness to work on these technologies.

If you are already an experienced professional, things would be even harder. After a level of experience on generally acquires some stiffness in attitude and aptitude.

One needs to show readiness to work and treated again as a novice, and leave all the fat of your experience behind to make an entry into a complete new field. You might be an experienced DBA or .NET Developer / Designer or some module / team / project lead, but that doesn't change the fact that you are a novice in MS BI and the first project you land in MS BI would be a beginner's level work. Then you slowly grow in the field with experience. There is no shortcut to hardwork.

In terms of aptitude, any knowledge is never wasted. Almost all MS technologies integrate in one or other way with MS BI upto an extent. In the order of increasing complexity, one can start with SSRS, then SSIS and then SSAS. Data Warehousing is more a process than just an analytical database. So once you are clear of the concepts of DW, one can take a specialized area of it using any of the MS BI Technologies. So anytime is good to start a career in MS BI or Data Warehousing, but don't rush to shed off your existing knowledge. Make a smooth and gradual transition, one cannot suddenly come in the skin of MS BI Developer / Architect. We are IT Professionals not X-Men :)

Books are your best friends. Start with foundation level books, seek guidance of some experienced BI Professional in your organization or over the web and then pick up a direction of your comfort.

2) Where to find books or training material to learn SSIS / SSAS / SSRS ?

If you work with at CMM Level 3 or plus kind of organization, you can always access your corporate library. If not, most of the organizations have books24x7.com subscription for employees, try searching on the same. Try searching downloads section on my blog, you would find quite a couple of books which are free from Microsoft or Red-Gate courtesy. Still if you have not found book you need, I suggest to make some investment in your career and buy the book. Investing some money is worth than wasting time to find a free ebook over the web. Remember, time is money and wasting time is equivalent to wasting money if you can envision it.

3) Which certifications to take up for MS BI and why to get certified ?

As of the draft of this post, the latest version is SQL Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft has announced that there would be no new certifications for R2 version. One can start with MCTS track, then on passing more exams one can earn MCITP and then final level is Microsoft Certified Master. These are online exams and can be appeared at any authorised Prometric or Vue testing centre. Passing score mostly for any exam remains 70%. Check out this URL for more information.

Most IT Professionals have the image that getting certified can be listed as one point during the annual review process and can be a glittering gem for justifying a good rating during the appraisal meeting. This is a myth, in fact if you get certified by resorting to wrong means, you are backbiting your career and interviewer like me would be more interested to grind you more to test your skills. Get certified to gain knowledge, to prove and benchmark your knowledge ONLY.

4) How to pass an interview for a MS BI work profile, when one has got no experience in MS BI ?

I would suggest that manage to get a project in MS BI with your present employer and after gaining experience, do think of making a change for right reasons. If you are making a change, do not expect your prospective employer to hire you for a technology which is not your primary strength. Join the company based on your primary skills, prove your technical strength on your primary skills and then based on your image as a professional and your knowledge in MS BI, try to get yourself landed in a MS BI Project.

5) How should I prepare for MS BI i.e. SSIS / SSAS / SSRS Interview and where can I get interview questions ?

This is one question that I encounter the most. If you are looking for interview questions over the web, then I would say that you are definitely not 100% ready to appear an interview. The level of readiness you have of taking someone's interview, is the level of readiness you have of appearing for an interview. In my views, the best way is to join MSDN Forums for respective technologies like SSIS Forum, SSRS Forum or SSAS Forum. A lot of real life questions are discussed and answered everyday by professionals of all kinds of maturity level. Be a part of it, help others to help yourself. Beware, that you would find some MVP hungry folks on those forums who would answer any and every question to gain points in whatever way they could. Ignore such people, and focus on your objective of learning the technology by studying problems and devising solutions for the same.

6) Where can I get training on MS BI / SSIS / SSAS / SSRS ?

Many companies do conduct corporate training, one can always attend those ones. If you do not have that facility available, I would not suggest to attend some classes as that definitely costs some huge money and when you do not have idea of what you should get trained on, it doesn't make sense to get trained in something when you are not aware of it's significance.

When I started my blog, I was not aware of an army of workshippers, whom I term as Blog / MVP workshippers. Approach any famous blogger or MVP or any author with the intention of acquiring knowledge or getting guidelines to move in the right direction. And mostly such people won't charge you anything for such help. If they ask fees for even such guidelines, they are not worth consulting, avoid them. Keep in view that everything that glitters is not gold, and every famous IT Professional is not knowledgeable in the proportion of his/her popularity. Use your head, seek guidelines, study the trend, read books and DO NOT be a dumb workshipper or follower of some popular IT figure.

This is by far the lengthiest post on my blog, and I was able to stretch this long as I can see many people burning in the skin of their present career, waiting or confused to make a start in Business Intelligence or Data Warehousing. If you have read till here, I hope you have found this information useful. All the best with your Quest !!