Oct 28 2007

2007 Conference Presentations Posted

Categories: Conferences Dave Rathbun @ 8:56 am

I have (for now, at least) created a specific page for downloading conference presentations. I felt like this would make it easier to find them. If I post the presentations on a blog post, they will eventually roll off of the front page and I would imagine I would get plenty of questions about “where to download…” and so on.

Instead I have created a page just for hosting download links.

Conference Presentations

For now I have posted the Tales of the Ninja (part one and two) in zip format. The supplementary files (reports and universes and databases) are not yet available, and I am not sure when I will get the time to set them up properly. The first post related to this presentation is up and posted, and you can follow along with all of them using the Insight Americas 2007 category on the right-hand side menu.


Oct 26 2007

Index Awareness Part I: The Basics

Categories: 2007 Insight Americas,Universe Design Dave Rathbun @ 4:26 pm

What is Index Awareness?

The first topic that I covered in my “Tales From a Universe Ninja” presentation at the 2007 Insight Americas conference was Index Awareness. I have to admit, this would probably not have been my first choice for a topic. I covered it on request from a member of the Universe Designer product team. As I went through this feature I found that much of what I remembered was still true even in XI R2. But I also found that in the right environment this feature could really help.

If you have downloaded a copy of my presentation then I am going to cover slides 10 through 16 in this blog post. Future blog posts will cover the rest of the material from the presentation. I believe that this feature was introduced in version 6.5 which means you must be at least at that version to be able to consider using it.

This feature is defined in the Universe Designer help file as follows:

Object keys allow Universe Designer to generate more efficient SQL by filtering on primary key values and eliminating unnecessary joins.

That’s great, but what does it mean?

Continue reading “Index Awareness Part I: The Basics”


Oct 19 2007

Back From Orlando

Categories: Conferences Dave Rathbun @ 9:40 am

I arrived home in Dallas from the conference late last night and now can start trying to catch up on all of the work that accrued while I was gone. I should be ready to start blogging again in a few days.

I did mention at the conference that I was going to post my presentations here on my blog, and I certainly plan to do that. My original plan had been to include each presentation in a post and then open those posts up for comments or questions. In reviewing that idea I am now thinking of taking a different approach, and I would appreciate any feedback on what might work better.

Continue reading “Back From Orlando”


Oct 13 2007

Peeling the Onion…

Categories: General Dave Rathbun @ 9:07 am

A few weeks ago I spent a good bit of time trying to solve the wrong problem. Don’t you hate that when it happens?

It all started when we added another fact table to our database. I had to add the new fact table to my universe, create the new context, and repointed a bunch of existing objects from the old fact table to the new one. As we started testing the reports we started seeing an error:

WIS 00013 Error during SQL Generation

Naturally this was because of the switch from one fact table to another, right?

Continue reading “Peeling the Onion…”


Oct 08 2007

Business Objects – Under New Management

Categories: General Dave Rathbun @ 8:32 am

How ironic. 😆 Right after I posted about the change in management (or lack thereof) at Integra Solutions, and Business Objects comes out with a very similar announcement. What does this all mean?

For the next year or so, probably nothing. Companies as large as Business Objects have long-term strategic plans that extend out for years and I don’t see SAP being interesting in trying to turn those around on a dime. Besides, they’re probably privy to those plans by now and must feel like Business Objects is going in the correct direction or they would not have completed the transaction.

It does mean that I lost out on a chance to buy Business Objects stock on the cheap. 😉 The arbitrage folks will be all over this one when the markets open today…


Oct 04 2007

Integra Solutions – Under Same Management

Categories: General Dave Rathbun @ 2:02 pm

I joined Integra Solutions in January of 1995 and have been working on Business Objects training or consulting projects ever since. Last month Integra Solutions was merged into Quorum Business Solutions. Other than the issuing bank on my paycheck, nearly everything has stayed the same. 🙂

New Integra Logo

Press Release: Integra to Operate as an Integrated Business Unit of Quorum

Continue reading “Integra Solutions – Under Same Management”


Oct 01 2007

Universe Parameter: Eval Without Parenthesis

Categories: Universe Design Dave Rathbun @ 4:19 pm

The @Select() function adds a lot of flexibility as long as it is used properly. When to use it (and when not to use it) is probably a future blog post (or perhaps even more than one 😆 ). But one of the things that I don’t care for is the fact that when I do use it, the referenced code is embedded within extra parenthesis. It turns out there is a way to change that behavior.

Continue reading “Universe Parameter: Eval Without Parenthesis”