BI and Data Management
Jan 22 2012
A QlikView QuickStart: first steps for learning QlikView desktop
QlikTech’s QlikView reporting and analysis tool is among a new class of Business Intelligence (BI) software tools. As Ben Harden reported in a recent blog post, BI vendors like SAP, Microsoft, and IBM have traditionally sold “to the IT enterprise, but companies like QlikTech and Tableau are targeting the business and bypassing IT. Their tools are quicker to stand up, more intuitive and don’t need the configuration, support, and hardware that the bigger players require.”
A Quick Overview
At first look QlikView is fairly accessible to those experienced with BI tools. A “.qvw” QlikView file contains three classes of user-facing components: a script-based data integration language that runs when the user requests a “reload”, a data modeling component that looks deceptively like a relational data modeling tool, and a familiar array of data visualizations: graphics, charts, lists, etc.
Dec 14 2011
Project reviews, deliverables’ reviews and constructive criticisms
Project managers often face tough times when they need to pull the strings that may make others uncomfortable. Those mainly include conducting project reviews for balancing the triple constraints, facilitating the reviews of the deliverables for quality or compliance, and providing constructive criticism to the team members for corrective or preventive actions.
Everyone likes to hear or deliver good news, however good project managers are expected to be the experts at relaying when things don’t go as planned, typically coupled with a pro-active solution.
The following are the most successful approaches good project managers often practice.
Dec 11 2011
Double test efficiency and build app dev culture at no charge
What if you could double the efficiency of your software testing process, and substantially reduce errors found during the test, deployment, and maintenance phases, without purchasing any tool or method? The November 28 InformationWeek offers just that in a reprint of a recent Dr. Dobbs article on formal inspections by Capers Jones and Olivier Bonsignour. They call formal inspections the “defect removal tool of choice” and back up their claim with lots of hard evidence, but I think they are still selling short.
Dec 07 2011
Addressing Slowly Changing Dimensions with Teradata v13
Earlier in my blog, Slowly Changing Dimensions – Special Attention Needed, I touched upon the need to pay special attention to slowly changing dimensions. Organizations have three variants of implementing solutions for slowly changing dimensions.
Type 1: in these implementations, the latest data is retained. This is implemented when there would be no need to do historic analysis. For example, an online transactional system that needs to display the latest list of values in the pull-down pick lists may use this type.
Type 2: in these implementations the history or the validity period for the changes is persisted.
Dec 07 2011
Logi Info Studio Risks
While describing LogiXML’s Logi Info, Brian Cox stated “there is still room for improvement on the development end of things.” If LogiXML is listening or if my developer peers wish to understand some of the risks, I will describe a few challenges I experienced.
Logi Info Studio is the developers’ tool for creating LogiXML's Logi Info reports. Since I am working with Logi Info Studio on one project and Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) (i.e., the developers’ tool for creating SQL Server Reporting Services reports) on another project, comparing the two products is natural for me. Examples and descriptions from each developer interface are included.
Element Name Proofing
Consider this simple query using the SQL Server AdventureWorks2008R2
database.