I'm not sure if the publishers or authors intentionally insert mistakes to make readers think, or what. But i found that a few of the listings had mistakes in them. Eg,Listing 9.10 shouldn't have spaces between Sales and Territory in [Sales Territory_MemberId_Label] or Sales and Person in [Sales Person_MemberId_Label]. And anywhere you see "MG_Bikes_Bikes Sales...", the sql will run only if you take out the s of the second "Bikes" in a number of places. Now, the AdventureWorksCycles staging db may be messed up and not the listings....but one is, and the publishers should get it straight, don't you think. Why should readers have to wonder....they should be able to complete what's to be learned in the exercizes rather than wondering if the database or the book is messed up.

Another listing that really bugged me is Listing 9.11.3, which told me that a column "Label" was not found. And sure enough, in the H_Product_Hierarchy table there isn't such a column. So i don't know who's missed a beat. It could be Microsoft with the AdventureworksDW, Rational Press, my PerfPoint configuration, or something else. But i've found that my hunch is Rational Press didn't take the time to work through the exercizes given in the book. And now i can't deploy the model i'm supposed to, and i'm prevented from moving through the later chapters such as Business Rules and Excel Add-Ins. Argh.

One more thing that makes me wonder is the lack of notes found in the downloaded "extra chapters" materials. So far i see only some Visual Studio solutions, an xls, and some .sql files. Nothing to explain all of that or say what specific learnings there are to be had from those. And i don't see a Bonus Chapter B either; and i downloaded everything to the same place. So that's a little confusing to.

Overall this book is a good intro, but it would be far better if the examples and extras were better tested and explained. It would be great too if there was a forum on the rationalpress site where questions could be asked or if customersupport would answer email. But nope, it seems you're on your own with this one. You get what you pay for.

Nick Barclay and Adrian Downes did it again! After writing their first and great guide to learning and deploying Business Scorecard Manager, these two brilliant consultants wrote the great guides to PerformancePoint Server (one for Planning and one for Monitoring and Analytics).

These books are easy to read and make the technology very approachable. Additionally, the authors collaborated very closely with the development team so you know that the content you get is true to its original intent!

Couple this with the authors first hand's experience with the product and long time expertise in this space and you get two books, which are MUST reads for anyone who wants to get started with PerformancePoint Server and with Microsoft Business Intelligence.

I have been involved in architecting and designing Microsoft based business intelligence solutions for the past 8 years. I was very excited when PerformancePoint was launched because it filled a very real need in the Microsoft BI platform. It is always a challenge to find training material when a new product is launched so Adrian and Nick's books have been released at just the right time.
I enjoyed both books(The Rational Guide To Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Rational Guides),The Rational Guide To Monitoring and Analyzing with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Rational Guides)) for the following reasons:
They are clear and simple to understand
They highlight the most important techinical and functional considerations without being too high level
They are practical and not theoretical even though the first few chapters set the scene
You don't need to be a subject matter expert to understand them
They are short so you can read them very quickly

They are great books that will allow you to get up to speed very quickly on PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics as well as Planning.

Excellent! Just as highly recommended as the authors' companion book, "The Rational Guide to... M&A w/ PPS. This PPS Planning learning guide's effectiveness is especially noteworthy in light of the completely new Performance Management (PM) sophistication that the PPS Planning Module introduces to Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) developers of all experience levels and, of course, the skill with which this text introduces it. Although other books will delve deeper into specific topics (especially Integration and Business Rules), this one sets a high standard with succinct, authoritative explanations and thoughtful skill-building exercises in every major functional area. As a side-note, this book showcases to experienced performance management technologists just how much sophistication and value Microsoft has introduced into the performance management product marketplace.

PART I - INTRODUCTION: The authors begin by introducing the roles that planning and budgeting processes have been intended to play in the business environment, describing how traditional business processes and technologies have inherently limited their real-world effectiveness in terms of the tasks effecting employee workflow, data accuracy, security, and ease of use, and then explaining how each of those tasks is optimized as planning and budgeting roles integrate into a business intelligence information framework. Armed with this high level perspective, readers are mostly prepared to learn how to actually accomplish this, albeit in ways unexpected by most traditional MS BI developers. Specifically, we will now be building automatically recurring write-back mechanisms so that planning, forecasting and budgetting workflows will write-back data to data marts and, by extension, cubes. We will also be incorporating more types of data sources, not as an unfortunate alternative to good ETL, but on a planned, best-case basis as performance management work-flows require. Lastly, we will be highly leveraging Analysis Services' unary operators and account dimensions.

Before jumping into the "how to do it" section, I caution readers, and especially experienced MS Analysis Services 2005 OLAP developers, that, in light of the new PM requirements just described, PPS Planning will have you building both relational and OLAP objects in ways that are ...let's just say "unique". You might not have done it exactly this way for a traditional UDM MOLAP cube. Although your careful exploration of these unique SQL Server objects is encouraged, I suggest that you delay at least some of it until after you well-understand what PPS Planning is accomplishing. Fortunately, PPS Planning automates the vast majority of those nuances, such that readers, whether developers or power-user analysts, can quickly get productive.

PART II - INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION: In addition installation, this section introduces readers to the Planning Administration Console (PAC), wherein PPS Planning applications, model sites, role-based security and data sources are initially configured, and introduces Planning Business Modeler (PBM), wherein most of the subsequent work is completed. Notably, applications created in PPS Planning are instantiated as SQL Server 2005 relational databases, and Planning Model Sites become Analysis Services 2005 OLAP databases with completely-built cubes. As a side-bar, readers are advised, beginning at this point in the text, to take care to document usernames, roles and passwords as entered in this section and to pay extra close attention throughout the book to always login to Planning Business Modeler or the Excel Add-In with the username specified in each specific exercise.

PART III - SOLUTION DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION: Here, we dive deeper. Explanations, followed by respective exercises, covering the creation of dimensions, member sets, business models, model subsites, model security are aptly covered. Although Chapter 9, "Integrating Business Data" -- which will be the least accessible for non-SQL-heads -- provides a balanced coverage of the complex topic so that readers can progress by (carefully) following the cookbook, SQL/ETL pro's will want to decide when (not if) to dive deeper into learn this (by starting with product help files) and learn exactly how it relates to traditional ETL, which it does not replace. Analysts -- prepare for initial bewilderment. Chapter 10, "Defining Business Rules", takes the complimentary approach, without losing stride with excessive business-side detail (and thus losing the interest of ETL-oriented readers), it move readers through the simple use of business model properties, rules and rule sets. Specifically, the configuration of these business rules are close to a culmination of everything learned so far in that, in text examples, they orchestrate the relationship of data "actuals" to "budgets" and "forecasts" within models and thereby govern how budget forecasts and "what-if" analyses are smoothly integrated into a performance dashboard and/or written back into the data mart and OLAP cube without jeopardizing the sacrosanct "actuals" data. Without a doubt, it feels like a very slick way to avoid ever having to say to your DBA, "Well, we've completed our what-if analyses and thanks for the added permissions, but ehhr... we can't seem to find the actual data anymore. But you backed it up, right?" Relax, `cause it won't happen here. Of note, this chapter very briefly introduces "PerformancePoint Expression Language" (PEL), which is an MDX (multi-dimensional expression) short-hand just for PPS Planning. Although additional PEL detail would have been interesting, it would also have slowed the overall pace of learning. Again, see product help files.

The book's last written topic, in Chapter 11, is "Using the PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel". It introduces readers to PPS Planning Forms (and by extension, read-only Reports ) that performance-management users will ultimately use to assign, contribute, review, edit and approve workflow tasks associated with budgeting, forecasting and "what-if" analyses. As before, the book provides an effective, self-contained introduction which showcases some of Excel 2007's new-found sophistication, but which readers will subsequently want to build upon. As elsewhere, it's essential reading and mercifully succinct (unlike this review, I'll admit).

FOUR BONUS CHAPTERS: Although not reviewed here, they are each substantial, virtually essential, and are respectively entitled "Implementing Process Management", "Consolidating Data with Associations", "Operational and Management Reporting", and "Closing the Performance Management Loop". Conveniently, and along with all required databases and code samples, they are available online at no charge.

PREPARATION: As with the authors' "Rational ...PPS M&A" book, the best way to deploy the entire platform to readers' PC's, for learning or light-development is to download the following from Microsoft: (A) Virtual PC 2007; and (B) BI-VPC V 5.1+, which includes tons of software, including PPS 2007, MOSS 2007, SQL Server 2005 Dev Edition. Lastly, I recommend 4 GB of RAM on the machine, and strongly discourage readers' from trying to use the BI-VPC with under 2GB RAM.

For all of the above reasons, this book is highly recommended!

Excellent! At least as highly recommended as the authors' companion book, "The Rational Guide to... M&A w/ PPS, with the simple caveat that many readers will benefit from reader the M&A guide first. This PPS Planning learning guide's effectiveness is especially noteworthy in light of the completely new Performance Management (PM) sophistication that the PPS Planning Module introduces to Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) developers of all experience levels and, of course, the skill with which this text introduces it. Although other books will delve deeper into specific topics (especially Integration and Business Rules), this one sets a high standard with succinct, authoritative explanations and thoughtful skill-building exercises in every major functional area. As an sidebar, this book also successfully showcases the big step forward that PerformancePoint 2007, even as a "Version 1", represents for Microsoft in terms of "capability per licensing dollar" in the Business Intelligence and Performance Management space.

PART I - INTRODUCTION: The authors begin by introducing the roles that planning and budgeting processes have been intended to play in the business environment, describing how traditional business processes and technologies have inherently limited their real-world effectiveness in terms of the tasks effecting employee workflow, data accuracy, security, and ease of use, and then explaining how each of those tasks is optimized as planning and budgeting roles integrate into a business intelligence information framework. Armed with this high level perspective, readers are mostly prepared to learn how to actually accomplish this, albeit in ways unexpected by most traditional MS BI developers, who have not typically had to build in the recurring write-back mechanisms to data marts and cubes, have not had to accommodate so many types of data sources on a planned basis as performance management requires, and lastly, have not explored unary operators and account dimensions.

Before jumping into the "how to do it" section, I caution readers, and especially experienced MS Analysis Services 2005 OLAP developers, that, in light of the new PM requirements just described, PPS Planning will have you building both relational and OLAP objects in ways that are ...let's just say "unique". You might not have done it exactly this way for a traditional UDM MOLAP cube. Although your careful exploration of these unique SQL Server is encouraged, I suggest that you delay much of it until after you complete the book. Fortunately, notwithstanding the importance of the many nuances that PPS Planning introduces into SQL Server, PPS Planning also automates the vast majority of them, such that readers, whether developers or power-user analysts, can quickly get productive.

PART II - INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION: In addition installation, this section introduces readers to the Planning Administration Console (PAC), wherein PPS Planning applications, model sites, role-based security and data sources are initially configured, and introduces Planning Business Modeler (PBM), wherein most of the subsequent work is completed. Notably, applications created in PPS Planning are instantiated as SQL Server 2005 relational databases, and Planning Model Sites become Analysis Services 2005 OLAP databases with completely-built cubes. As a side-bar, readers are advised, beginning at this point in the text, to take care to document usernames, roles and passwords as entered in this section and to pay extra close attention throughout the book to always login to Planning Business Modeler or the Excel Add-In with the username specified in each specific exercise.

PART III - SOLUTION DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION: Here, we dive deeper. Explanations, followed by respective exercises, covering the creation of dimensions, member sets, business models, model subsites, model security are aptly covered. Although Chapter 9, "Integrating Business Data" -- which will be the least accessible for non-SQL-heads -- provides a balanced coverage of the complex topic so that readers can progress by (carefully) following the cookbook, SQL/ETL pro's will want to decide when (not if) to dive deeper into learn this (by starting with product help files) and learn exactly how it relates to traditional ETL, which it does not replace. Analysts -- prepare for initial bewilderment. Chapter 10, "Defining Business Rules", takes the complimentary approach, without losing stride with excessive business-side detail (and thus losing the interest of ETL-oriented readers), it move readers through the simple use of business model properties, rules and rule sets. Specifically, the configuration of these business rules are close to a culmination of everything learned so far in that, in text examples, they orchestrate the relationship of data "actuals" to "budgets" and "forecasts" within models and thereby govern how budget forecasts and "what-if" analyses are smoothly integrated into a performance dashboard and/or written back into the data mart and OLAP cube without jeopardizing the sacrosanct "actuals" data. Without a doubt, it feels like a very slick way to avoid ever having to say to your DBA, "Well, we've completed our what-if analyses and thanks for the added permissions, but ehhr... we can't seem to find the actual data anymore. But you backed it up, right?" Relax, `cause it won't happen here. Of note, this chapter very briefly introduces "PerformancePoint Expression Language" (PEL), which is an MDX (multi-dimensional expression) short-hand just for PPS Planning. Although additional PEL detail would have been interesting, it would also have slowed the overall pace of learning. Again, see product help files.

The book's last written topic, in Chapter 11, is "Using the PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel". It introduces readers to PPS Planning Forms (and by extension, read-only Reports ) that performance-management users will ultimately use to assign, contribute, review, edit and approve workflow tasks associated with budgeting, forecasting and "what-if" analyses. As before, the book provides an effective, self-contained introduction which showcases some of Excel 2007's new-found sophistication, but which readers will subsequently want to build upon. As elsewhere, it's essential reading and mercifully succinct (unlike this review, I'll admit).

FOUR BONUS CHAPTERS: Although not reviewed here, they are each substantial, virtually essential, and are respectively entitled "Implementing Process Management", "Consolidating Data with Associations", "Operational and Management Reporting", and "Closing the Performance Management Loop". Conveniently, and along with all required databases and code samples, they are available online at no charge.

PREPARATION: As with the authors' "Rational ...PPS M&A" book, the best way to deploy the entire platform to readers' PC's, for learning or light-development is to download the following from Microsoft: (A) Virtual PC 2007; and (B) BI-VPC V 5.1+, which includes tons of software, including PPS 2007, MOSS 2007, SQL Server 2005 Dev Edition. Lastly, I recommend 4 GB of RAM on the machine, and strongly discourage readers' from trying to use the BI-VPC with under 2GB RAM.

For all of the above reasons, this book is highly recommended!

I have a bad tendency of purchasing technical books and never reading them until I have a problem where I need a technical reference. However, I found myself reading this book cover to cover. I have been using PerformancePoint Server (PPS) 2007 Planning since prior to the software release, going back to May 2007. I have also attended a four day long PPS Boot Camp. Even then, I learned a great deal from this book. I found it easy to read and it covers all the technical topics necessary to implement a PPS solution. Before buying a different book, I would recommend checking to see if it covers all the major aspects of Planning, including topics like Business Rules, PEL (PerformancePoint Expression Language), and Data Integration. Data integration is often forgotten or purposely left out due to its complexity, but authors Adrian Downes and Nick Barclay include an entire chapter dedicated to this subject (43 pages). In addition, once you register the book with the publisher online, there's a great deal of bonus materials available for download. These materials include many SQL examples for data integration. You can cut down your development time by modifying the SQL they provided. Also included in the bonus materials are four additional chapters to the book.

This book is great if you're new to PerformancePoint Server Planning or if you've been using it for awhile. I'm using it to study for the PPS exam to gain certification. My employer has tasked me with coming up with a PPS curriculum for other consultants to learn PPS. I'm incorporating this book and "The Rational Guide to Monitoring and Analyzing with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007" into self study for my peers wanting to learn the software. Both books incorporate a step by step approach that aid in learning.

In summary, this book is jammed pack full of good tips for both new and experienced PPS developers and has a good price point. I highly recommend it.