Writing this book has been a long journey, and it would not have been possible without the guidance, inspiration, and mentorship provided by many others along the way. I'd like to show appreciation to all those who have assisted me along the path.

First of all, I would like to thank the Xcelsius developers for their efforts in bringing us new features and fixes with every new version of Xcelsius.

I would like to thank everyone in the Xcelsius community for their contributions on SDN, LinkedIn, and blogs. Without the community, we wouldn't have anywhere to look for help when we come across a problem. In addition, thoughts and ideas are taken into account by the development team to create a better product in the long run. A big thank you goes to Kalyan Verma for giving me the opportunity to contribute to his blog, http://myxcelsius.com, and really getting me kick-started with community participation (an excellent job on getting myxcelsius.com to where it is today!). Another big thanks to Mico Yuk of Everything Xcelsius for her past advice and really getting the community involved with Xcelsius.

I'd like to thank Xavier Hacking for coauthoring the book. Without Xavier's teamwork, knowledge, and expertise, this book would not have been a success. I would also like to commend his great work on his blog at http://www.hackingsap.com.

A big thanks to the Packt Publishing team (Stephanie Moss, Leena Purkait, Reshma Sundaresan, and Samantha Gonsalves) for providing all the necessary guidance in our writing process. Without the Packt Publishing team, this book would not have been possible.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge Ryan Goodman for inspiring me to participate in blogging and assisting the community on Business Intelligence best practices and solutions.