Business Intelligence Markup Language
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| Designed by | Scott Currie |
|---|---|
| Developer | Varigence |
| First appeared | 2008 |
| Stable release |
3.0 / November 1, 2012
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| OS | Microsoft Windows |
| Filename extensions | .biml |
| Website | www |
| Major implementations | |
| Mist IDE, BIDS Helper | |
Business Intelligence Markup Language (Biml) is a domain-specific XML dialect for defining business intelligence (BI) assets. Biml authored BI assets can currently be used by the BIDS Helper add-on for Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and the Varigence Mist integrated development environment; both tools translate Biml metadata into SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) assets for the Microsoft SQL Server platform. However, emitters can be created to compile Biml for any desired BI platform.
While Biml’s declarative design is sufficient to author BI assets, BimlScript extends the language by enabling authors to embed C# or VB.NET code within Biml, similar to how ASP.NET includes .NET code within static HTML markup. BimlScript is used to merge changes into existing Biml assets, automatically generate Biml code, and apply changes across multiple Biml files during compilation.
Biml is an XML dialect that specifies all aspects of a BI solution, including relational models, data transformation packages, multi-dimensional models, and tabular models.
Unlike other BI solutions, Biml has a "write once, target any platform" philosophy. This enables Biml users to switch their target platform without needing to change their code. Currently, Biml targets SQL Server versions 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2014, emitting SSIS packages and SSAS cubes.
Because Biml is XML, it can leverage the vast ecosystem of tools for XML based languages. This also makes it human readable/writeable, so it is easier to edit by hand than the SSIS/SSAS files it generates.
In late 2009, Biml was extended with BimlScript. BimlScript allows C# or VB.NET code nuggets to be embedded directly within Biml. BimlScript's goal is to automate repetitive work in reusable scripts. Additionally, it's been used to automate package generation and build reusable patterns for BI tasks. BimlScript is also used to take metadata from various sources (relational database structure, relational data, flat files, annotations, etc...) and automatically generate Biml code from it.
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