BIP? BIP stands for Business Intelligence Portal and it is really a very useful set of web parts allowing SharePoint users to view their OLAP or relational data in various ways. You do not have to have a SharePoint Portal Server installed, it works very nicely also on Windows SharePoint Services. Easy to install, easy to configure. It is provided by Microsoft as a sample application but for me it is much more than simply a sample application. There is for example the 'BIP Viewer', a very smart web part.

Useful is also the possibility to define and configure charts, spreadsheets, gauges, data analyzers and more centrally and then simply have the users connect to the configuration they need at that moment. BIP comes with a site definition. A new SharePoint team site can be created using the definition and in it you can manage the BIP tree.

The BIP viewer has 4 panels you can activate. In each of the panels, you can visualize one of the possible GUI components. Web dialogs allow users to define the configuration (eg. toolbar yes or no, ...) and the data source that will be used for the data (OLAP, relational, XML,...).

So, if you are in need to display BI-data, certainly have a look at these web parts and the BIP site definition. I see great possibilities for it in some of our projects.