Microsoft Announces New BI Capabilities for SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005

Today at the 2004 Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) Community Summit in Orlando, FL, Bill Baker, the SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI) General Manager for Microsoft, announced new BI capabilities for SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. For SQL Server 2000, SQL Server Report Packs for Exchange Server and Compensating Resource Manager (CRM) are available for free download today and will provide customers with templates of commonly used reports that users can easily modify for their own custom reports. Also, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) recently announced that they’re shipping with SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services in its latest product release. CRM announced they’d ship the next version of its product with Reporting Services. For SQL Server 2005, technology from the ActiveViews acquisition will be included in the new Reporting Services Report Builder, which will provide a self-service, ad hoc report builder. Data Transformation Services (DTS) has been re-named SQL Server Integration Services and it will extend its extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) capabilities to let customers integrate data from any location. Also, SQL Server Analysis Services will provide proactive caching. With these new built-in BI capabilities, customers using SQL Server will experience greater insight to their business resulting in increased Return on Investment (ROI) and business productivity for the entire organization.