Career advice - Java Programmer to Business Intelligence (BI)

[ali hammad]

Business Intelligence is hot these days and the big data phenomenon is tempting. I've developed interest for it lately. I'm a Java developer with 5 years of experience in Java/JEE, front-end web technologies and I'm good at SQL as well but I want to switch to a less programming intensive job. But I wanna stay in the tech industry.

Here are my thoughts and a few questions

Would anyone consider me for a BI position with a programmer background? If yes,then why? If no, then how can I get into BI sector? Do I need some certification or a degree before someone takes me seriously?

Who are the big players in BI (vendors) and what tool suites they have in their pockets? And who among these is highest in demand?

Please suggest some good books or online resources to get myself familiar with BI


Thank you

[K. Tsang]

BI is often linked with data warehousing (DW). BI tends to deal with front end (eg reports) and DW the backend (database). Therefore the roles a person can play in any BI/DW project are: DB & server admin/tuning, report design/programming, cube/OLAP design/programming, dashboard design/programming.

In fact I have experienced BI/DW for a few years and my take is it depends on the company and projects.

Depending on your skill sets and the company that hires you and the project you are in, your role "may" change, which is good. But from the PM/company perspective, most often they want someone to be a core member/expert in particular area. So you may start off say with report and stay in report area forever. Again depends on PM/company and project.

As for vendors, there are lots: IBM Cognos, Oracle Hyperion, Oracle BI, SAS, QuikView, Informatica, etc.

As for if BI/DW use java as a programming implementation, hardly. Yet the BI server (not the OS) is a Java web/EE container.

Each vendor has its own report design tool (eg IBM Cognos has Report Studio). Similar for OLAP cubes (eg IBM Cogos has Transformer). So learning such tool is key.

Therefore, java background will help but it's not a main tool on a daily/project basis. This again depends on the product the project uses.

However, big data I believe will use java more (eg Hadoop).