Dave’s Adventures in Business Intelligence

I am proud to introduce the Dagira Group. *sound of crickets chirping*

What the heck is the Dagira Group? Astute readers (and that would be all of them, far be it from me to think anything less ) will recognize that “dagira” is the domain name for my blog. At the moment the “group” is relatively exclusive, as it consists of exactly one person.

Me.

Why is that?

Here is something I don’t get to say very often… I resigned from my job yesterday. In over twenty years I have only worked for three different companies. In the late 80’s I started in the technical support department of a software company named Fifth Generation Systems and eventually made my way into the IT group there. They made the top-selling personal computer backup program called Fastback, later followed by Fastback Plus. Yes, that is a highly-collectable still shrink-wrapped package from my computer museum that I have scanned and posted. (I say “museum”, my wife says “junk”, but to each their own, right?)

I worked for Fifth Generation Systems until 1992. At that point I moved to Dallas to join a consulting firm where I continued to work until the end of 1994. I joined Integra Solutions and started learning Business Objects in January of 1995. That was a long time ago. In 2007 Integra Solutions merged with Quorum Business Solutions but I’m going to still count that as one company.

So that means from 1988 to 2009 I only worked for three companies. What’s next?

First I am going to take some time off, as I already had some vacation scheduled. (I am going to get out of this Texas heat and go somewhere much cooler.) When I come back, I have some preliminary ideas about a universe review service that I would like to offer, as well as some other things that have been floating around in my brain for a while. I will be posting more details as they get finalized. I will still be doing the presentations that I was selected for at the GBN conference coming this fall, and I will continue to remain active on BOB. Those things won’t change.

The services that I have in mind will be provided by a new company named the Dagira Group, and ultimately this blog site will contain more information about the services that I hope to offer.

So as I said earlier in this post, I am proud to introduce the Dagira Group. *sound of much applause*

There, that was better.

By the way, I have several blog posts written up and scheduled to be published while I am on vacation. You’ll never even know I am gone.

There are so many things going on; I don’t know where to start. Some of the events are more global than others.

• XI 3.1 SP2 has been released. Dallas Marks has already provided details about the release. Tom Nather also posted that it’s lacking some fix packs.
• I just finished going through an Xcelsius training class. Expect to see some blog posts on it soon.
• DFW local user group meeting is coming up on Tuesday. I was scheduled to present but they moved the date which left me with a conflict. Now I don’t have a conflict, so I get to go.
  
• Voting for the 2009 BOB Member of the Year will open shortly. I have to finish checking the nominations and get the voting page ready to go. BOB members that have been registered for more than 90 days can vote.
• “Early Bird” registration for the 2009 GBN Annual Conference in Dallas expires on August 21st. You don’t want to miss “Return of the Variables” do you?
  

There is more potential news to come, but that’s what I have for now. I am also going to be taking some vacation soon. Don’t worry, I have some blog posts scheduled to come out while I’m gone so you can carry on without me.

I am going to be delivering two sessions at the 2009 GBN conference this fall. I have one scheduled on Monday and the other is on Wednesday. My first session will be about report variables, and will most likely use the 3.x line of Webi for the demonstration platform. I’ve posted about the history of the “Variables” series of presentations before. Since I haven’t done one of those for a while, the title that was submitted was “Return of the Variables.”

Session Code: 902
Title: Return of the Variables
Session Date: Oct 19 2009
Session Time: 1:30PM – 2:30PM
Room: Fleur De Lis A&B

The past few years I have done a few presentations on universe design and I have another one this year too. I just finished a project where we had to deal with recursive (hierarchical) data, and we used quite a few interesting techniques to solve those challenges. I’m going to show various ways to model recursive data and the implications each design has on reports. The subject is a bit more specific than I usually like to use for a conference presentation, but it comes up enough that I decided to submit it anyway. I hope the folks that attend will find it useful.

Session Code: 1012
Title: Universe Models for Recursive Data
Session Date: Oct 21 2009
Session Time: 10:45AM – 11:45AM
Room: Grand Ballroom D

The conference is back in Dallas again this year, which means I don’t get to travel somewhere fun. More information on the conference (including a full schedule) can be found on the conference web site.

Related Links

• GBN Annual Conference

Some of you may already know this, but I have more than one blog. Five, to be exact. The reason I did that was because I have a wide variety of interests and one blog just wasn’t going to work. People that are interested in photography won’t want to read about phpBB, and people that are interested in phpBB aren’t going to be ready to wade through all of the Business Objects posts, and so on. Thus the extra blogs.

I have decided I need to do the same thing with twitter. I started with only one twitter account, but I am now going to split off the BI tweets into a new channel. The new channel can be found under http://twitter.com/dagira_tweets.

As a footnote to this post, here is the standard icon used for twitter members that don’t upload a picture:

And here is a picture of the hotel carpet at a reception I went to a few weeks ago at SAPPHIRE:

I think I was the only one who noticed.

Changing Data Providers in Complex Reports

We have some fairly complex reports at my current client. Of course the word “complex” is not very clear; what is simple to me might be complex to someone else. So let me quantify what I mean by “complex” in this case. The report in question has multiple data provders. Each data provider generates multi-pass SQL because of contexts. Altogether there are 29 data providers with an overall total of over 100 SQL passes. That’s what I mean by a “complex” report, and I think most folks would agree with that assessment.

The challenge is that for this (and other) complex reports we have been encountering severe issues. In some cases we are unable to edit the queries without restarting our browser session. We also have encountered a number of problems during the process of repointing the document from one universe (development) to another (user acceptance testing) within the same environment. Continue reading “Java Memory Errors During Data Provider Updates in Web Intelligence”

Isn’t it a bit disconcerting that the Web Intelligence programmers felt like they had to include “hours” on the “please wait” dialog box?

This post might not seem like it’s related to Business Intelligence at first, but stay with me to the end and I promise I will tie it all together.

Have you ever purchased a product that came with a coupon that you had to mail in? The idea is that rather than drop the price on a product a company will offer a rebate or other incentive to encourage you to spend your money. There is cost (overhead) involved in processing the rebate, so why don’t they just discount the product to begin with? A few months ago I got a new Blackberry phone (love love LOVE it, by the way). It was $200 but came with a $100 rebate. Nice deal, right? Not so fast. It seems that the rebate wasn’t quite cash in my pocket. It was a $100 “credit” card that I could only use at certain stores. Best Buy couldn’t figure out how to use it, but Walmart could. I eventually got to spend the entire $100 but it took extra effort. And that’s the issue here, the fact that consumers need to make extra effort on rebates.

Several years ago I worked for a company (as a client) that processes rebate requests. (This is one of the reasons I enjoy my job; I get to see all sorts of companies in different industries and learn how they work.) What I learned at this job was that all of those different companies that offer rebates for purchases don’t process the money themselves. Instead they hire one of the few companies that specializes in this area. Here is how that process works, at a very high level.

First, the product company determines the product(s) involved. Then they will talk to the rebate processor to get input on how much the rebate should be. Based on that meeting they will set up the rebate program, which the rebate company then gets paid to manage. Why would they do that? Why would company “A” ask company “B” how to price their product? That’s where the BI comes in. Continue reading “When Is a Rebate Not a Rebate? Part I”

I admit it… I am a data geek. I love playing with data. (That might amaze my statistics professor from college as I wasn’t very interested back then.) Being interested in data does help in my current career… but what about having some fun with it too?

Continue reading “Looking for Love, Truth, and Honesty”

No more blog posts from me for the rest of the year, as I will be taking some time off. See y’all next year! Happy holidays, and wishes of happiness and success to you and yours in the new year.

Today is the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. It is typically a holiday where families get together… the travel days around this holiday are often the busiest days from the entire year in airports and other travel hubs. As I am typing this my family is either in the kitchen preparing the afternoon meal (mmm, turkey) or outside running around (kids). I found myself – as I often do – migrating into my home office to check in online. While browing a few posts on BOB something occurred to me. I have come full circle in my “Adventures in Business Objects”. Continue reading “Full Circle: Memories of the Beginning”