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For the fifth year in a row, we showcase ingenious solutions from your peers in the SQL Server community
It's that time again: Since 2003, SQL Server Magazine has invited SQL Server professionals to submit their most creative solutions to technical problems to the annual SQL Server Magazine Innovators contest. Our winning entries this year-one grand prize, three runners-up, and two honorable mentions-show yet again that SQL Server pros are a resourceful, technically adept bunch and emphasize the prominent position that development has in the SQL Server pro's skill set. The solutions, though diverse, highlight SQL Server's value as a tool for providing essential business information.
Grand Prize
Ermedin "Dino" Selmanovic, BI Solution Architect
Moore Stephens Consulting, London
Intelligent Install
When Ermedin "Dino" Selmanovic and his eight-member development team at Moore Stephens Consulting, a UK-based firm specializing in developing custom applications for the insurance industry, proposed a business intelligence (BI) solution for a client two years ago, their real challenge wasn't choosing the solution's components, as The Challenge was using the components together. Microsoft provides a strong set of BI tools for SQL Server. Furthermore, says Dino, "We're 100 percent Microsoft, in terms of the solutions we provide-which tend to be SQL Server, Microsoft Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, and the ProClarity suite of products [which Microsoft recently acquired]." Dino and the Moore Stephens team proposed a solution that combined all these products to provide business and analysis reporting functions for the client. "On top of that, we needed to somehow integrate Analysis Services cubes, Reporting Services, and the ProClarity products-ProClarity Desktop Professional, ProClarity Analytics Server, and ProClarity Dashboard Server-into one portal that could be accessed internally as well as by the third parties that sell the products that the client provides," says Dino.
The integration aspect proved to be a tricky part of implementing the solution. The development team needed to write code to integrate the separate pieces of software so that each time the developers updated the solution-for example, to produce new reports or replace certain old views with new ones in response to the client's request-all the software components could communicate with each other seamlessly.
Even more problematic was the installation itself. When Dino and his team finally...