Over the holidays I took a Performance Point Server class to better by knowledge on
the subject. I had heard a lot about the product but was still a bit fuzzy on what it was
and what it could do.

Ok, so here is Performance Point in the nutshell:

It's a server software that is the under-pinnings for 2 web-based client pieces
which are very Sharepoint-ish in nature.

The first client piece is called Planning and Estimation. This piece is geared
toward the Financial Department in the organization. It contains financial
intelligence for functions like budgetin, forecasting and other useful Accounting fucntions
as well. The first step is to create a "Model Site" which defines how your operational
data will be viewed by Performance Point. Here you will define your financial, accounting
and time (like a time dimension in SSAS) intelligence.

You will also define the Dimensionsand members within the model. When creating the
dimensions you can will also create your user-defined hierarchies just as you would in
Analysis Services, only this tool makes it much, much easier. So easy in fact, it almost
feels like cheating. Once your model is defined, you will publish the model to the server. 
Once you publish your model, Performance Point will create a series of staging tables.
The only catch here is that the user is responsible for loading those staging tables by 
using an ETL tool like SSIS.

Once your models are created you can also assign security and roles to the data.
I won't go into too much depth here, I'll save it for another post. The reason that this
is key in the planning module is that when you create input forms (Excel reports),
it will govern which users will be able to modify the data in the report (this role is
called the "contributor") or only view the reports (this role is called the "approver"). 

In my next post, I will discuss the other very very cool piece called Monitoring and Analytics,
formerly called Business Scorecard Manager.  

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I also do on-site training for SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS
www.PragmaticWorks.com