Acknowledgments

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who patiently listened to my stream-of-consciousness literary and technical exercises while I worked on this book. The time spent talking with two close friends, Jim Misgen and Mike Provines, who are savvy business users of information in their own fields of industry, helped me better reach my objective to empower the non-technical business person who needs to manage information. I'm also indebted to my co-workers at Cizer Software for helping me validate many of the examples I used in this book, particularly Mike Melzer and Trey Johnson, and to my family, who spent many long evenings reviewing chapters on a deadline.

My sincere thanks also to my technical editor and long-term colleague, Sean Boon, who took time from his busy schedule with the Microsoft Office Business Intelligence product team to work with me on this book, and who has provided excellent technical input throughout the project. And to Kaia Petin, who provided a constant stream of real-world advice on what people really want to understand with a book like this.

And finally, thanks to my extremely patient editor, Wendy Rinaldi, for her constant encouragement and support, without whom this text would not have gotten to press.