Data Management & Warehousing

Tag: Business Intelligence

  • Creating Graphics for BI Reports in Ruby on Rails

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    macleanwalker
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    So your manager wants reports with sexy graphs – what are your options and what are the pros and cons I have found eight usable packages with different considerations OpenFlashChart This is a series of libraries including one for Ruby that allow the generation of great looking charts that are very dynamic (see the demo…

  • Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!

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    macleanwalker
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    The deception in our case is the accuracy of the data and the return on investment of the data warehouse solution. Too often projects make compromises in the implementation of a business intelligence solution that create massive cost and user dis-satisfaction downstream that lead to the failure of BI projects: For example: * In the…

  • BI Convention over Configuration

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    macleanwalker
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    The convention over configuration discussion when designing a data warehouse often leads to fanatical discussions by technical people over the ‘best’ approach to do things. Convention can be used to define the standard way to design a data model (see Process Neutral Data Modelling) or to implement an ETL transformation (for example a reducing sets approach)…

  • Agile Development of a BI application

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    macleanwalker
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    Wandering around the web I found a presentation by Soren Burkhart of Hawaii Business Consulting, LLC given at the Rails Conference in Portland, Oregon (May 2007) that describes a classic agile approach to developing a Business Intelligence application for the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of the US Department of the Treasury. It demonstrates the collecting of…

  • Can Business Intelligence Be Agile ?

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    macleanwalker
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    The agile manifesto and it’s underlying principles set out four key values for developing software solutions: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan If an organisation is willing to accept these values for software development then how much more important should adoption of them be for…

  • Black Swans and White Elephants

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    macleanwalker
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    Another ETIS presentation from Istanbul in Octovber 2009 This presentation looks at the Return on Investment in Business Intelligence projects Return on Investment is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is…

  • ETIS – The global IT association for telecommunications

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    macleanwalker
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    ETIS (http://etis.org) is a membership based organisation which brings together the major telecommunications providers in Europe on key information and communication technology issues. The mission of ETIS is to enable its members to improve their business performance by personal exchange of information on using ICT effectively. ETIS achieves this by engaging its members in various working…

  • How Data Works

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    macleanwalker
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    Every business believes that their data is unique. However the storage and management of that data uses similar methods and technologies across all organisations. As a result the same issues of consistency, performance and quality occur across all organisations. The commercial difference between organisations is not whether they have data issues but how they react…

  • From Volume to Value

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    macleanwalker
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    A presentation given to the Oracle Business Intelligence forum for Telcos that discussed how businesses should move from collecting volume of data to using the value of the data. It sets the context about what issues businesses are facing and then suggests five actions that can be used to help address the issues. These are:…

  • Overview Architecture for Enterprise Data Warehouses

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    macleanwalker
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    This is the first of a series of papers published by Data Management & Warehousing to look at the implementation of Enterprise Data Warehouse solutions in large organisations using a design pattern approach. A design pattern provides a generic approach, rather than a specific solution. It describes the steps that architecture, design and build teams…