There is a lot of overlapping in Microsoft BI suite. For advanced analytics, like data mining, you can use SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), or R, or Python, or Azure ML. The question arises which tool to use. The answer is simple, through another question. Why not all of them?
In data mining, you typically create multiple predictive models for the same task, and then evaluate them to select the best one. So why wouldn’t you even use different tools for different models? You will learn how to evaluate the predictive models. Then you will see how to bring all of the mining models together and compare them no matter of the source they come from. You will see how you can use SQL Server Integration Services, Excel, and other tools for this task.
