Participants profile
The course is open to students and unemployed professionals with background in one or more of the following topics:
- Statistics / Mathematics
- Information Technology
- Database and data analysis
- Marketing / Research
- Financials
The lessons are open to a maximum of 12 participants.
RES reserves the right to screen and select suitable candidates before the start of the lessons.
Topics
During the first part we will cover the fundamentals of business Intelligence, with a recap of dimensional modelling, database design and data quality.
The theory will be paired with practices and exercises with public domain datasets. Students are welcome to bring their own databases if so they wish.
The second and more expended part will be focused on the MicroStrategy software and SQL Server database.
Price and duration
The course is free. There may be a symbolic ticket to offset CO2 emission (TBD).
The estimate duration is 2 weeks, Monday to Thursday from 9am to 2pm. On Friday morning we will have non-mandatory parallel activities (online courses/tests, workshop related to freelancing, etc.) During the afternoon the students will be allowed access to the RES facility to continue their study -if desired-.
Requisites
Hardware
Students willing to participate in this course must have a working laptop with at least 4GB of RAM (suggested 6GB), enough free space on the hard drive to copy and execute VMWare player plus a virtual machine (approximately 40GB needed). During the course we may need to use internet access to look up information or download additional data. WIFI access will be provided by RES
Software
During the entire course we will use a virtual machine based on the VMWare virtualization software. There is a free evaluation edition available on the web: the students may want to pre-install it onto their machines before the start of the classes. Both Windows and Linux version are supported.
The virtual machine will be provided by RES during the first day of the course. Every piece of software needed for the classes is included into the virtual machine.
Skills
Command of the English language is necessary as the lessons and exercises will be held in English. No Exceptions.
ANSI SQL knowledge is not mandatory but helpful.
Previous knowledge of databases, data modeling and/or business intelligence will be a plus but not necessary.
Attitude
We value people with can-do attitude and learning skills. Curious, data savvy, who love to investigate, have questions and know how to find the answers.
The most important skill is desire to learn. We provide the rest.
Detailed program
Fundamentals of Data modelling
Recap of the basics of DM: Star schemas, Facts and Dimensions, Data Warehouse design, Referential Integrity. Why we do the things we do. Data quality.
MicroStrategy
Project Design
This section provides students with an overview of the project design process, from the physical schema for the data warehouse to creating a project. Students first learn about the role of MicroStrategy. Next, about the project creation process, including how to work with tables, facts, attributes, and user hierarchies to create a fully-functioning MicroStrategy project.
Reporting
This part provides students with an overview of the extensive reporting capabilities of MicroStrategy Desktop. Participants leave with an understanding of report creation and the numerous data and style report manipulations in MicroStrategy Desktop, including auto-style creation, drilling, data pivoting, page-by, outline mode, grid and graph formatting, and thresholds.
Additionally, participants become versed in the creation of basic components that are essential in the creation of reports, including report filters, metrics and prompts.
Interactive data pages
The last section provides an overview of document creation using MicroStrategy Report Services in MicroStrategy Web. The course introduces the many features that enable report designers to create web pages, documents and dashboards. Participants learn the features of Report Services, the Document Editor's structure and properties, techniques for formatting documents, document performance considerations, and more.
Documentation
All software manuals will be provided inside the virtual machine as PDF documents. Most of the documentation is available on the internet in form of articles, white papers, knowledge base, etc.
Students of the Seville University with access to the Safari bookshelf will find additional material searching for ISBN 9781782179757
