I am excited to announce that we have secured a great speaker for our next Central Texas Business Intelligence User Group meeting on October 21st at the Microsoft office in Austin.
Bryan C. Smith, prolific SSAS author and now of Microsoft fame, will be coming down to speak on a yet to be disclosed topic on SQL Server Analysis Services.
If you have not done so, and you live/work in the area, be sure to join our group on LinkedIn or send me an e-mail and I will add you to our distribution list – this is a speaker you do not want to miss (if you love all things SSAS).
On a broader note, we will be upping the frequency of the meetings to monthly after the October meeting.
In that vein, we are looking for some more presenters (Larry Clark (MS) and I love presenting, but I think the group would like to see some new faces). Please e-mail me or post to the LinkedIn group board if you are interested.
Hope to see some new faces there!
Tags: business intelligence,
ssas,
bi user group,
microsoft,
olap,
analysis services,
sql 2008
Categories: Business Intelligence |
SSAS
Reminder, we are having our next Central Texas Microsoft Business Intelligence User Group meeting a week from today, August 13th, 2009 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at the Microsoft Austin office.
Session Topic: "PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics 101"
Description:
In this session we will cover the basics of PerformancePoint: what it is, how it is deployed and sample architecture patterns. We will also cover the basic elements of Dashboard Designer and how developers and business analysts will use this tool to develop charts, grids, scorecards and KPIs for their business to consume.
If you haven't joined the group on LinkedIn yet, then please feel free to do so – it is an easy way to keep up with any updates, meeting announcements and meet others in our profession in the central Texas area. Logo below will take you to the group home page:
Be sure to RSVP if you are coming!
Tags: business intelligence,
dashboards,
performance point,
analysis services,
performance management
Categories: Business Intelligence
Good sales staff for consulting and services firms are hard to find. These great sales people are always working to strike the balance between knowing enough about the services, and in our case, the Microsoft products to talk intelligibly, but at the same time, not be overwhelmed in studying details and product nuances so that they are distracted from selling.
Bruno and Joey's "Drive Business Performance, Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution" is a great aide for business intelligence consultants looking to help their sales leads to understand the BI thought process and lift the talk away from fancy Excel charting and into true performance management.
While this book may be a bit of a slow read for someone mainly focused on technology implementation, I still recommend it. As consultants, we still need to bring our clients along with our solutions, and this primer can help with those talking points around people and organization, not just the tools.
Tags: business intelligence,
consulting,
books,
training,
performance management,
sales
Categories: Business Intelligence |
Training and Education
Join the Central Texas BI User Group on LinkedIn group to get announcements, start a discussion, share an article, etc.
Here is the URL for the group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1912918.
Tags:
Categories: Business Intelligence
Catapult Systems will be working with Microsoft to sponsor the first Central Texas Business Intelligence User Group.
The Central Texas BI User Group's objectives are to:
- Build community around BI and related technologies
- Cross-pollinate information and ideas on BI
- Provide a forum for companies to share innovative programs and solutions based on and related to BI
Dates:
- Wednesday, June 17th
- Thursday, August 13th
- Wednesday, October 21st
Format:
- Welcome Time: 5:30-6:15
- Intro & Logistics: 6:15 - 6:30
- Panel Q&A: 6:30-7:00
- Presentation: 7:00-8:00
Location:
Microsoft Office
9606 N. Mopac Expressway Suite 200
Austin, TX 78759
I will be presenting the first topic on SSRS 2008 integration with MOSS. I normally would have considered this topic somewhat stale – SSRS 2005 and MOSS 2007 integration topics have been out for a while, however this topic was chosen based on interest by our clients and the lack of true production implementations. This presentation will show an implementation on a small farm (no single server and thus not real world example!) with practices that you can immediately take away.
Please feel free to e-mail me at sid.atkinson "at" catapultsystems.com to get on the distribution list for this and future events.
Tags: bi user group,
business intelligence
Categories: Business Intelligence
Unfortunately, Microsoft has cancelled this year's BI conference in Seattle, WA. More on the reasons at the official Microsoft BI Blog.
Microsoft will cover BI technology and features at other conferences this year such as TechEd, the World Wide Partner conference, the SharePoint conference and SQL Server PASS.
Currently, the Microsoft BI conference will be a biannual event, making the next event October 2010.
Tags: bi conference,
business intelligence,
conferences
Categories: Business Intelligence
The ubiquitous mantra surrounding business intelligence is "the right information, at the right time, in the right format".
There is nothing wrong with this phrasing. Information put in the right hands and in an immediately usable format can be very empowering. One of the finer points is around "right information" -- how do we know what is right?
An example of this issue (and to pick on something in the news a lot right now), are the U.S. unemployment figures batted about in the news. Are we better than the Great Depression era? Where does the current economy sit in relation to the Great Depression? Where are we in relation to other recessions or depressions?
On the surface when we attempt to answer this, one can say that the U.S. employment metric of 8.1% from February 2009 is still far below the 1933 peak of 24.9%. Even removing seasonal adjustments on the current number puts the "official" unemployment metric at 8.9%. Does this mean we are better off? What relief can one take from this measure?
As with any measure, it is important to know how it is calculated – this becomes even more important when trying to compare across time period, and not just one quarter from the next, but in this instance, decades. Here are a few quick facts to keep in mind when looking at and trying to compare these unemployment measures:
- Before 1940, unemployment statistics were gathered in a variety of decentralized means, with various ways to measure employed versus unemployed
- The Works Progress Administration owned the survey between 1940 and 1942, before transferring to the Census Bureau
- In 1959, the Bureau of Labor Stats took over analyzing and publishing the data, but the Census Bureau still collects it
- In 1994, the CPS (Current population survey) chose a different measure for the "official" unemployment metric. Article here
What do these various facts tell us?
Our current unemployment measures are broken into several categories, U1-U6. U3 is the current official metric that is quoted in the news and plastered across news papers. U3 is the unemployment measure mentioned above, currently sitting at 8.1% for end of February 2009. Historical economists however, recognize that the surveys that were done during the 1930s are closer to our current U6 unemployment measure. Given this, can we really compare our current official metric to the official metric of the Great Depression era? To be accurate, no.
Compounding the issue in looking at even more recent recessions in the 1970s and 1980s is the fourth bullet point: the BLS switched officially reported unemployment metrics from 1993 to the 1994 year. Pre-1994, a modified version of U5 was the official measure, while post 1993 and forward, the BLS has switched to U3.
Luckily for the savvy numbers enthusiast, the Bureau of Labor Stats still published all six unemployment measures. So how do we really compare? Still a tricky answer; the accuracy of the pre-1940 surveys are still called into question, however, if one works off of the assumption that our current U6 unemployment measure is the closest, then we are at 14.8%!
Seasonally adjusted of course.
References:
Tags: business intelligence,
ramblings,
auditing,
data management,
data quality
Categories: Business Intelligence
I have been remiss in paying attention to my visitors – my sincerest apologies to those who use FireFox.
It was not until earlier this week that I realized my previous blog format and CSS was not friendly to FireFox. Personally, I do not use the browser, switching only between IE and Google's Chrome (and Safari on my iPod touch). The problem came to my attention when I was assisting a friend with some queries and we referenced something on one of my prior posts – the ugly scene came alive in his FireFox window and I immediately resolved to correct this oversight.
What makes this more of a travesty is that I have information at my fingertips that removes any excuses. Here is a visitor chart for a given timeframe (Google Analytics):
Why even mention this? Who cares? Just change the template and don't tell me why….(a questioning voice other than my own)
I think it is important for those of us in the business intelligence/analytics field to recognize when there is information readily available, yet not taken advantage of for any number of reasons. It is always important to question the basics, turn over assumptions and look at what is really there.
As for me, I had simply forgotten that people use other browsers. My laptop comes pre-loaded with everything for work, and since I spend most of my time in the lower tiers of the application, I do not often work in the layers of a project where UI validation is an important subject matter. My assumption? That my readers are like me (bad assumption).
The important lesson? In my case, voice of the customer – I need to pay attention to what my readers are doing and how they access my site so that I do not alienate those seeking information or to post a comment.
Have a good weekend!
Tags: business intelligence,
ramblings
Categories: Business Intelligence |
General
It has been a terribly busy month – I actually started writing this post at the end of January, but only now am I able to finish it and fire it off to my blog. Feel free to post or e-mail me with any follow up questions
I ran across an issue at one client where a calculated measure was not behaving as desired (though it was behaving as designed!). Since this is a topic not likely to be broached in bar conversation or in the break room over hot tea, I wanted to cover a few cogent points here that might be useful to others.
Though several items were at the root of the measure not being calculated as expected, the issue that is common to anyone using calculated members is a misunderstanding of calculation passes and solve order (more here on MSDN). The MSDN article does a great job of showing calculated members in an MDX query, using solve order and the different result sets you will get with differing solve order sets, however the article feels a little dearth in its explanation of calculation passes and why solve order sometimes is necessary for correct calculations in your queries.
Analysis Services loads data into the cube in passes – on the first pass (pass 0) leaf members are loaded from fact data, the second pass (pass 0.5) loads the values of cells associated with sum, count, min, max, distinct and distinct count aggregate functions. After this is completed, then the load process can start on the cube calculations represented in the calculations tab. This is where, though intuitively you may recognize this, it is important to understand how calculation passes and solve order come into play.
For this example, I will reference the ubiquitous AdventureWorks example, now available via CodePlex:
In this cube, the calculated member [Total Sales Ratio to All Products] has a calculation reference to [Total Sales Amount]. Calculation pass comes into play here via the order of the calculated sets in the script. Notice that [Total Sales Amount] is at line 2 and [Total Sales Ratio to All Products] – just via placement in the calculation pane, you are declaring the pass order for these cube calculations. This is easy to see in this example, however on the customer that was experiencing a calculation problem, they literally had hundreds of cube calculations, with multiple developers having touched the product, so the last person in to work on new calculations and tweak old ones had not noticed the order of referenced calculations and thus had a hard time finding where the calc had gone wrong.
It is also important to remember that the last, or highest pass trumps previous passes when it comes to calculations. In the AdventureWorks cube, if we added another measure at line three that named [Total Sales Amount Revised], with the expression = [Total Sales Amount], then provided nothing else changed, we would then have two measures that had the same value. If we add to the script down at the last line that [Total Sales Amount] equals 20, then both [Total Sales Amount] and [Total Sales Amount Revised] would now equal 20 as the last pass wins in assigning values to the calculated members.
This is where FREEZE comes into play – in the scenario above, we can say: FREEZE([Total Sales Amount Revised]) on the line right after we set [Total Sales Amount Revised]'s value, and then when [Total Sales Amount] gets reset at the end of the script, the [Total Sales Amount Revised] will retain its values as calculated in the earlier pass. This can be incredibly useful for using role playing calculations in financial scenarios (which was part of my client's mission).
Solve order then, is used when you are writing out your query or sub-cube in MDX and need to replicate the calculation passes that the Calculations Tab manages in Visual Studio. You do not normally use solve_order in calculations in the cube designer, however it can be used to give Analysis Services your desired calculation path if in one script block on the calculations pane, you are doing two more advanced calculations that are linked. Since these calculations would be solved in the same pass, i.e., you placed them within the same scope statement, etc, then solve_order would explicitly spell out the order for the engine to calculate. Mostly, however, solve_order is used in MDX query examples as provided in the MSDN article.
Tags: analysis services,
mdx
Categories: Business Intelligence |
SSAS
I am not addicted to text messaging. I was talked into using FaceBook and found out that two of my high school teachers are more active on the site than I am.
I love getting cards or real mail. I don't own a game system except for one that was passed down to me and is currently sitting unplugged, unused.
We have one T.V. with no cable, just PBS over the antenna.
It's not that I am slow to adapt, or painstakingly deliberate – I just don't feel the need to be inundated day in and day out with information, much of it which has little to nothing to do with the decisions I need to make.
Why bring this up? I'm not going to bore you with a personal diatribe about modern technology, but rather make a point about information systems and how we need to be careful in our decisions.
One of the points I get clients to hammer out detail on when putting into place any level of reporting/analytics is how they will respond to the data once they get – what are the methods and governances you will have around the metrics once you start seeing them? One of my favorite stories is of a call center manager who was set to fire half of his staff due to returns or exchanges of computer products, until we pointed out to him he needed to look at the year over year context to understand that this was a normal consumer cycle and that they were actually doing better than the year before.
This is a cogent point all the more given our current economic state – we are not required to have an immediate reaction to every action that occurs. We (the market and our government) did not have a planned method for response to these events – if you do not have a plan or understanding of why the needle tips, and what to do when it does, then you put yourself in danger with any immediate response to that moving gauge.
I get a small chuckle out of everyone misquoting Milton Friedman when it comes to the Great Depression and trying to fit his statement into current context.
He did place a lot of blame on the Fed for contracting the money supply during a time when banks needed liquidity, but if you understand more of Friedman and his advocacy for a free market, then you cannot place his thinking next to the decisions guiding the "bailout".
Friedman was a very deliberate person and a brilliant economist (gross understatement). With all the information we now have at hand, much more data and coming in much more timely, there is the opportunity to pick a more measured path for the economy.
So what does this have to do with being old fashioned? Maybe it's just my weird thought pattern for the day, but I believe that we haven't learned as a society what to do with, and how to react to the amount of information we are given every minute of the day. Stocks fluctuate intraday for no apparent reason other than they have a high "news" index on Google or Yahoo!; an industry becomes hot overnight because it gets featured in some trade publication for some minor purpose, and then the story copied over and over -- or, one of my favorites about United Airlines and a mistake in publishing a story that plunged the stock over 75% in one day.
I guess that I am old fashioned in that I like to get all the facts before making a decision – it's not to say that I don't make up my mind quickly on a great many things, but often I can rely on either experience or an accumulation of points before that juncture that allow me to pick (hopefully) the best option before me.
I think something I'll use to underline this point: is there any day trader (technical investor) out there that can compete with Warren Buffet (value investor)?
It is important that we, as I/T professionals, push our clients to consider the facts, plan for excellence, plan for the long term, and to do this, we need to help them understand the repercussions of the information they will be receiving from the systems we put in place.
Thoughts, examples? Please feel free to comment or e-mail me.
Tags: ramblings,
business intelligence
Categories: Business Intelligence