Microsoft Business Intelligence Architect

Reports to Principal Architect. Job Purpose MPS Partners is looking for an Senior Technologist that will play a critical role in developing and delivering innovative Collaboration, Workflow and Scorecarding solutions. The solution will focus on Information Delivery and Business Intelligence solutions using Microsoft technologies combined with a Ralph Kimball style delivery methodology. The responsibilities of this role include hands-on installation and configuration of the business intelligence components within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, installation and configuration of Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager 2005 and development of reports using SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Excel 2007/2003. Additionally in this role, experience writing relational and OLAP database queries using SQL, T-SQL, and MDX is a strong plus. This position is a combination of hands-on development and customer facing activities and will require excellent organization and communication skills. The Senior Technologist will work with leading-edge Microsoft technologies to develop the next generation of business intelligence and information delivery solutions. As a certified gold partner with a recognized competency in data management, we work closely with contacts at Microsoft to provide feedback on product requirements, participate in TAP early access programs, and develop prescriptive guidance to support customers using the latest Microsoft technologies. Salary & Contract Terms Full Time Employee. Competitive salary based on professional experience. Main Responsibilities

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Work closely with the architects and project management to deliver superior solutions for our customers Participate in architecture & design sessions with architects and clients Work with project team to gather appropriate requirements Develop and document solution design Design and implement complex data models Develop .NET solutions and composite applications on web and smart client platforms Develop complex reports Develop human based workflow processes Execute and document unit tests for all developed work Assist in all aspects of solution testing and testing documentation Complete tasks to specification and within appropriate timeframes Associate Experience MPS Partners desires associates that bring their best to work everyday. Associates must be strongly motivated and have excellent client facing skills. Associates must have very strong verbal and written communication skills. Associate should have previous professional consulting experience. Associate

should bring unique problem solving and analytical skills. Associate should be a Microsoft Certified Professional and show a desire to remain current with both industry and Microsoft technologies and standards. Associates Non-Technical Requirements

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Degree level qualification desirable but suitable professional experience will be considered Strong written and verbal communication skills A meticulous eye for detail Ability to show initiative with minimal direction Ability to prioritize tasks and remain in sync with team plans Desire to exceed as a thought leader and participate in industry thought leadership events Associate Technical Requirements

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Experience with Microsoft Business Scorecard Management or PerformancePoint is preferred Minimum 3 years experience implementing and administering Microsoft SharePoint Solutions. Minimum 3 years experience with Microsoft SQL Server (2000/2005) including Integration Services, DTS, Analysis Services, and T-SQL programming. Demonstrated experience developing .NET (v 1.0 / v2.0) applications using C# or VB.NET for Web (ASP.NET) or Windows. Demonstrated experience installing, configuring, and maintaining Microsoft Windows 2003 servers for high-availability production systems.

BI Architect Sample resume

Igor Rozenberg 347-244-6444 irozenberg@msn.com SUMMARY: Seasoned, highly skilled senior DW/BI Architect with a wide range of cross industry experience and expertise in defining and executing data and technical architecture strategies that increase competitive advantage. Strong leadership skills - experience in building and supervising large, multi-disciplinary, geographically dispersed IT teams. Experienced in delivering decision support, Business Intelligence (BI), and Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Technically skilled in

developing global warehouse architectures, policies, and procedures and integrating data warehouse projects by leveraging existing technology investments. Excellent management, problem solving, conflict resolution and moderating skills. Over 25 years of professional programming experience with systems design and data processing. Employed in developing user interfaces for applications, multithreaded programming, and data warehouse development. Has stable knowledge in object-oriented programming and design, experienced in developing web applications, expert in business intelligence solutions. TECHNICAL SKILLS: SQL SERVER 2008 R2, SYBASE, ORACLE, DB2, MS SQL ANALYSIS SERVICES, MS SQL INTEGRATION SERVICES, MS SQL REPORTING SERVICES, MS VISIO, ER STUDIO, PROCLARITY ANALYTICS SERVER 6.3, PERFORMANCEPOINT SERVER 2007, POWERPIVOT, BUSINESS OBJECTS XI, MOSS 2010, XMLA, AMO, TSQL/PLSQL, MDX, DMX, .NET FRAMEWORK, C#, ASP.NET, WINFORMS, VB SCRIPT, JAVA SCRIPT, EXCEL VBA. EXPERIENCE: 03/10 to KAPLAN TEST PREPARATION -NY Present BI Architect/SSIS Developer Implemented integration of different CRM, ERP endpoints, using SSIS, into single Data Warehouse. Managed Team of 5 ETL SSIS developers and 4 OLAP SSAS administrators, supporting Global Data Marts, resided in geographically dispersed Enterprise Data Centers. Architected reporting framework using Star Schema Data warehouse and SSAS cube, which consumes data feeds from different data endpoints. Created Enterprise Data Vault models, leveraging numerous non-SQL Server data sources and integrating them into the UDM. Designed and implemented a MDM Repository providing a centralized information source for the data models, data maps, processes, documents, contact lists, project calendars and issues. Tuned Database schemas - relational and multidimensional for best performance and respond. Evaluated new tools for the Enterprise Data Warehouse environment, including data integration, Data Marts, Business Intelligence (BI), and Data Repository tools. Published, updated, and provide training on data standards, polices, and procedures. Conducted governance of compatibility relational to multidimensional DB schemas. Created SQL Agent Jobs to extract data from different source systems using SSIS packages. Stored Procedures called within these packages aggregate the data and load them in temporary staging tables, with further promotion to DW tables. Technology Used: MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, Microsoft MDM, SharePoint Server 2010 09/08 to CREDIT SUISSE BANK - NY 02/10 BI Architect/Senior Developer Was responsible for identifying and controlling BI projects scope, quality, and schedule. Worked on

strategic initiatives Private Equity IRR calculations and reporting on relative exposure, created OLAP SSAS cube for Direct Hedge Fund operational data, sourced from Geneva. Responsibilities included: Prepared metrics report, KPI's dashboards based on appropriate benchmarks, provided by Barra, to measure performance of company s managed portfolios. Created training sets for Decision Tree calculations of Portfolio Accounts performance in different geo areas. Involved Clustering data mining algorithm for prediction of stocks that will be in demand. Conducted data mining queries from Securities Master repository using DMX. Accomplished valuation of the OLTP Reporting system. Monitored Performance of the OLAP Reporting conversion project. Gave recommendations on SSAS MDX syntax approaches for appropriate implementation and performance improvements, based on trace files and perfmon logs. Developed MS SSAS 2008 cubes to support Ratings of different Structured Finance Asset Types, i.e. CDO, ABS, MBS. Sourced data from different end-points included messaging agents, flat files, Oracle DB using SSIS conformed and non-conformed packages. Created replication topology for DR environment. Used Log Shipping and Replication Models (Snapshot, Merge and Transactional) along with Backup/Restore of databases. Technology Used: MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, DMX 01/07 to ALLIANZ ASSET MANAGEMENT - NY 08/08 Data warehouse Architect Managed system design and creation of functional specification for improving Portfolio Accounting system AXYS/APX. Responsibilities included: Collected user requirements from portfolio managers, trade analysts on calculating Dividends and Tax Withholdings for variety of multi-national accounts. Improvement meant to fix drawbacks of importing dividend notifications and improper calculations of taxes. Created SSIS packages for loading pre-calculated tax records into APX. Possessed Expert knowledge in creating Indexed Views, complex T-SQL Stored Procedures, userdefined Functions, and effective Triggers to facilitate data manipulation and consistency. Technology Used: MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, AXYS 05/06 to POINDEXTER SYSTEMS - NY 12/06 OLAP Systems Architect Managed application development, client relationship and deployment of intranet reporting solution for media advertisement business unit. Worked extensively with SQL Server Reporting Services 2000/2005 to develop and distribute reports on daily basis. Developed and maintained metrics reports for external clients like Blue Lithium, Value Click and internal clients like Media+1. Worked with MS SSAS 2005 OLAP Cubes and Excel to generate Pivot Tables. Tuned star/snowflake schemas for optimal performance. Created KPIs and Dashboard reports for executive management decision. Technology Used: MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, Excel Pivot

01/06 to HEWLETT PACKARD CONSULTING/PFIZER - NEW YORK 04/06 DW Architect Participated in development Management Reporting System, using MS Reporting Service, which queried complex cubes resided in MS Analysis Service. Responsibilities included: Administered MS SSAS in enterprise environment, providing support in cube design, creating complex MDX queries, cubes performance tuning. Created XSLT transformation of the XML Reports produced by RS for further rendering in HTML pages. Accessed RS via SOAP calls, using custom ASP.NET controls. Technology Used: MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, XML 02/05 to CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON BANK - NY. 12/05 .Net Systems Architect Was responsible for identifying and controlling projects scope, quality, and schedule. Used Rational Rose and Visio for diagramming of business workflow. Worked on strategic initiative - creating Collateral System for Global Security Lending group within Prime Brokerage line of business. Collaborated with heterogeneous systems serving Fixed Income Repo trading desk, Equities trading desk, Equity Swaps and others. System was built on the .NET Framework Service Oriented Architecture. Responsibilities included: Architected Service-Oriented, Data Mining functionality using MS SSAS, from different data streams, using Star Schema. Created matrix reports using MS SQL 2005 Reporting Services for collateral analysis. Developed complex MDX queries against cubes in MS Analysis Service for calculations of Budgeted vs Actual numbers. Participated in migration of Hedge Fund Manager Sales activity data mart using maps from Informatica to SSIS. Technology Used: Sybase 12, MS SQL SSIS/SSAS/SSRS, MDX 10/04 to ALLIANZ ASSET MANAGEMENT - NY 01/05 .NET APPLICATIONS ARCHITECT Participated in architecture and implementation of application for Portfolio Modeling (Simulations), What If and Before After Reporting. The project involved building interactive front end using .NET Framework C# language, interfacing with MOXY trading and SENTINEL compliance systems and reporting using Microsoft Reporting Services. The tool was meant to provide a method of seeing the effect that various trades and factors would have on their portfolios. Responsibilities included: Provided an automated feed from external applications, used FIX protocol format and MSMQ queued feeds for data exchange. Developed .NET C# GUI components for program trading based on proprietary algorithms selection, resided in the Rule Engine web service. Technology Used: .NET, FIX

06/02 to DELOITTE & TOUCHE - NY 10/04 Financial Systems Architect Managed application development, client relationship and deployment of the ABS, CMBS, CDO, ABCP Systems. Produced business use cases to supplement business requirements. Specialized in Collateral Management and Analysis, used Collateral Data Repository to perform collateral-level securitization calculations. The underlying collateral consisted of credit card debts, high yield bonds, subordinated securities from structured transactions, mortgage-backed securities. Architected C# WinForm/ASP.NET distributed client, communicated via Web Service and business layer objects with different databases, i.e. Oracle 10, SQL Server 2000, Sybase 12, DB2. SOAP communication organized with XML packets, secured using SAML tags. Architected eRoom collaboration with 3-rd party clients, using templates and hierarchical folders, reflected dataflow process.. Participate in Deal Structuring, defining characteristics of deals including bond principal and interest payments, credit enhancement, hedging instruments, fees and the waterfall using ABS/CMBS Suite software. Technology Used: MS SQL, ORACLE, C# 05/01 to NATIONAL MEDICAL HEALTH CARD SYSTEM INC - NY 05/02 Data warehouse Architect Prepared activity and progress reports using standard enterprise project management and reporting tool. Managed modifications and updates to CBA documentation, performed validation of final analysis. Participated in developing Clinical Patient Registry software. Product had been designed to help convert pharmacy, medical and lab data into management advise information. Created MS SSAS dimensions model, with appropriate levels and attributes. Used ETL tools to move data from a normalized database into a dimension table. Developed online BI management system for analyzing scheduled deliveries of the prescription drugs. One of the goal - reduction in the total annual rx dollar benefits was achieved using incremental analysis utilized with serialized test information using XML files uploaded into SQL SERVER 2000. Technology Used: MS SQL DTS/SSAS, XML 04/00 to DELOITTE & TOUCHE - NY 05/01 Applications Architect Architected Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) Trading System using ASP and MS SQL SERVER 2000 database for Wells Fargo bank. Calculated risk of collateral portfolio which depends on average collateral quality and the extent of its diversification. Utilized with Stored Procedures in SQL SERVER 2000. Participate in collecting user requirements from the Front Office Strategic Group for analyzing and making taxonomy suggestions for better visual representation. Was involved in Unit testing, Regression testing of the Intranet/Internet applications, used test driven development cycle and SCRUM approach. Created reports for locked in term funds and earned incremental fee income using Crystal Web Server and Crystal Reports 8.5.

02/00 to BLUESTONE CAPITAL/TRADE.COM - NY 04/00 Applications Architect Was responsible for converting existing online multi-currency stock trading system from ASP to reusable COM component base technology in MTS environment. Implemented Web base reporting system using Crystal Reports 8.0 ActiveX viewer. 10/99 to MERRILL LYNCH - SOMERSET, NJ 02/00 Applications Architect Responsible for design and development of 5 years compensation projector using Web technology for the Domestic Private Client division. Created Java Scriptlets for reusing as COM components in manipulating Database data. Developed classes of Cascading Style Sheets level 2 for rendering page elements and printing from the IE 4.0 . 02/99 to AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP (AIG) - NY 10/99 Applications Architect Participated in architecture and development of the application for collecting claims data from the vendors across the country. Was responsible for production support of the time critical application for providing company with claims data from different vendors. B2B layer had been utilized using XML ACORD document schema. Custom built parser for mapping data between different content Data Bases was written in MS Visual Basic 6.0. 10/98 to MERRILL LYNCH - NJ 02/99 Applications Architect Responsible for rewriting existing mainframe application - Capital Accumulation Award Planning for Financial Consultants and Estate Planning Specialists, internal users of the Domestic Private Client division using WEB technology. Created custom Word97 templates utilizing VBA5 for automating version control' and used ADO 2.5 for pulling data out of the ORACLE 8. Administrated Financial Consultants Annuities site, participated in deploying part of the Merrill Lynches National Sales Global Web Site for testing purposes on the IIS 4.0. 09/97 to COMPLIANCE TOOLS, INC - NY. 09/98 Senior Developer Developed a system for the Compliance Department. Participated in designing user interface, created different kind of personal trading reports. Was responsible for back-end development and GUI design of personal trading system. Organized reports, query objects, running objects, viewing and analyzing results in Crystal Info 6.0, which enabled Compliance Department workgroup to automatically share information. Provided users with scheduled reports on Preclearence Violations, Broker Confirmation, and Company Trades Comparative Reports.

12/96 to RDA ENTERPRISES, INC - NY. 08/97 Senior Developer Was responsible for design and implementation of the modules for Conference Planning System. Application track and monitor conferences and related events. Third-party control Spread 2.5 was used for quick and convenient way of data selection. Maintained the system for the department of human resources at the medical center, converted existing application for the new one, which increased the processing speed nearly twice. 09/90 to COMMERCIAL BANK AVAL - UKRAINE. 09/96 Software Developer Was responsible for developing full project life cycle of various Banking and Financial systems including Check Balances, Financial Tracking, Accounts Payable and Receivable. Utilized with Visual Basic 3.0 and ORACLE 6.x 07/84 to AUTOMOBILE PLANT - UKRAINE 08/90 Software Developer Participated in developing and maintaining payroll system (utilized with PL/1, ADABAS, NATURAL). EDUCATION: State University - UKRAINE. MS in Mathematics and Computer Science.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

MS BI Infrastructure Architect - Developing readiness for the role and responsibilities

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Architect is a very appealing word to all the aspiring technical minds, but most people do not realize that architect is an adjective-free role. Have you ever heard terms like SSIS Architect, SSAS Architect, SSRS Architect, PPS Architect etc.. ? If yes, then I would say that Architect word has been loosely used instead of the term SME.

The first difference between developers and architects in my vision is the broadness of domain. Most developers would stick to a technology instead of a platform, whereas this ideology does not suit the JD for an architect. If you have the ideology that "I have

worked with SQL Server for 5 - 8 yrs, I am good at T-SQL programming, SSIS, SSRS and have theoretical idea of DW. And if you ask me what is Sharepoint, .Net, Webservices, Cloud, Infrastructure, Data Modeling, etc.. this is not my domain.", I would stamp "Biased MS BI Developer" on your CV. Architect requires changing many hats like Technical Architect, Data Architect, Solution Architect etc, and being an Infrastructure Architect is one such hat. If you are an Architect, many a times you would find yourself in a role where you are the Infra Architect + Data Architect + Application Architect + Solution Architect, and you might be given few technology specific SMEs for consulting. I have been in such situations as I had experiences with all these individual roles as a tech lead through the course of my career. Whatever I am sharing is based on my experiences.

When a solution encompassing application development technologies and MS BI technologies are promoted from environment to environment i.e. from dev -> staging > APT -> Prod, this requires infrastructure estimation, capacity planning, software configuration, server connection topology etc before the environments are built. If you think that to setup such environment, one can just procure servers, add memory and rig the systems, probably you must be setting up infrastructure for solutions of very modest size. If you are developing solutions for an enterprise class client, there is a high probability that there would be a Data Center with shared application environments where your solution would be hosted.

Here comes the first lesson as well as challenge for the Infra Architect. Virtualization is the SQL of Infrastructure capacity planning. You would have to deal with infrastructure teams, who would discuss, advise and challenge your estimations and talk about technologies like Hyper-V, VCPUs, RAM, Ports and Protocols. You might be using MS BI Stack, Sharepoint and .NET Stack, Microsoft System Center and each of these would have different connectivity and hardware requirements. At a minimum you should know what MS BI stack needs in terms of infrastructure design. Ideally in a virtualization environment, development servers run on 4 VCPU, 4 - 8 GB RAM and Production servers of modest size run on 8 VCPU and approx 16 GB RAM. If you are not aware of

what is a core, vcpu, ports etc you should start developing an understanding of the same.

The next major challenge you would be faced with is memory capacity planning, this mostly depends upon data and load. Application Performance Testing environments would be setup to test performance, and you should learn how to interpret the results from those environments. Testing teams would be using Load Runner kind of tools to perform a load testing, and you would be getting regular reports containing performance counters, concurrent users, memory utilization, CPU utilization etc. This is second area where would act as your profiler.

The final major challenge is allocation right amount of memory for different aspects of the solution. For example, if you have SQL Server and MS BI technologies, you need to allocate memory for logs, backups, installation, data etc. Based on this calculation you need to estimate total memory requirements and also setup designs for hosting application environments on the planned infrastructure.

You would not be practically building servers and installing softwares. In an enterprise class IT environment, there are dedicated teams for the same, but the order to march forward comes from the architect of the solution and not the architect of infrastructure teams. So at the minimum you have to create a technical architecture diagrams from infra setup to communicate your design and estimation. Being in such a role is a challenge, and fortunately or unfortunately I have been in such role and had learned a lot from the same. I hope this post brings some vision to professionals prone to such challenges. If you need to borrow my experience, feel free to drop me an email.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Planning MS BI project / solution deployment

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In my views, "Failing to Plan means Planning to Fail". Most project managers and technical leads undervalue the importance of deployment in the solution development life cycle. Deployment planning is often considered even out of solution development perspective, and the complexity of this process is only realized when the deployment sits on the hot seat. In any professional IT products and services providing organization, you would find regular environments like Development, Staging (UAT), APT (Application Performance Testing) and Production. Each of these environments can have different corporate policies that implies a set of security and access methodologies in these environments. So if you have not planned your deployment strategy, each environment can compel you to make changes to your development.

A typical MS BI solution would consist of technologies like Microsoft .NET, SQL Server SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, MOSS with/without enterprise services, Microsoft System Center, Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Office among the major application and database components. Below are some of the points to keep in view, which can have a huge impact on the overall solution development, and ignoring these points generally would emerge as a show-stopper to develop a generic build and deployment package.

1) Server and Instance names: Generally to make speedy progress development in development systems, often developers use hard-coded database names / instance names / server names. Different environments can have different server and instance names.

2) Service Accounts: Initially when development machines are setup for the team, developers tend to use whatever account has the best privileges or their own account. This would immediately fail in environments where a separate team would be deploying your build and there would be a separate dedicated service account created for an

application as per the corporate policies. Also in many secure production environments, network admins keep on changing service account password at regular intervals. So if you are using user id as well as password to access web services and you have not programmed your services to pick up credentials from a configuration store, you just hit another show stopper.

3) Software Configuration: MOSS and .NET development can require creating many proxies and web / service references, which are mostly sourced or build in the form of DLLs. These can make your solution dependent on certain libraries, which are hard to detect as the development would federated across various development machines. This creates a discrepancy in software configuration. Again certain developers might be using different IDEs with add-ons that would dump external DLLs, for example AJAX Toolkit with VS 2008 and Sharepoint Designer. This needs to be carefully planned, as your server environment might not contain all these libraries.

4) Security Configuration: This is one of the most complex bit. Different technologies talking to each other would be communicating mostly through Windows Integrated Authentication or Active Directory Federation Services ( Windows Identity Foundation / Single Sign-On) configured with a claims / token based mechanism. It is quite possible that development environments can have different security configuration than other environments. During development this goes easily out of focus and the prize to pay for this is very heavy afterwards.

Site Collections / Web applications created on MOSS would be using HTTP / HTTPS with certificates which would need to be installed and configured on the site. Corporate policy might not allow you to copy certificates across servers, and this may come to light only when you might want to deploy your solution and infrastructure teams would raise a red flag for certificates.

I have been personally evident of a scenario where different developers developed their SSIS packages with ProtectionLevel property of the package set to EncryptSensitiveWithUserKey. Developers keep joining and leaving the team and they log on to systems using their Active Directory IDs. When the solution was deployed on a different environment, the solution started failing. Now these packages can be fixed only using the credentials of the users who developed them, and this iceberg almost sank the ship.

5) Automation: Many things are done manually like executing DB Scripts, deploying SSRS reports using BIDS, deploying MOSS site using Sharepoint Designer. You would find yourself with a new development cycle, when infrastructure teams responsible for staging and production environments would refrain you from access to these environments.

6) Shared environments: Solutions that are equipped with exclusive servers are quite lucky and also are generally first of their breed or mission critical. In any organization that is having an infrastructure setup in data centres for their IT Services would have shared environment for different application services like SSRS Reporting Servers, MOSS Application Servers etc. One may overlook this detail considering that fact that the same version of the service is used. But at certain levels overlooking key piece of information can be very heavy, for example, one may change web.config file which is the configuration file for entire server. Shared servers would be catering an array of applications, so when you deploy your solution you would not have the luxury of changing these files. At this point again your solution would fail.

Planning your infrastructure followed by deployment can provide insight into many restrictions and dependencies that you may discover very late. And such discoveries can either break your solution or invite a huge effort to develop your deployment setup. Remember one thing, "Failing to Plan means Planning to Fail" !!
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L A B E L S : B U S IN E S S IN T E L L I G E N C E , S HA R E P O I N T B U S IN E S S I N T E L L I G EN C E