Archive for April, 2011
Tech Tip: Use the Big Decimal Datatype for Truly Big Numbers
By 
Order numbers Part numbers Account numbers Shipment tracking numbers Financial transaction ids If you have any of these types of numbers in your data warehouse you need to be aware of the MicroStrategy datatype ‘Big Decimal’ and what it does: It is one of the available datatypes inside the MicroStrategy attribute editor. If you have [...]
Applying Agile Processes to Data Warehousing Projects
Agile methods (agile modeling, agile data, the agile unified process and the agile enterprise process) were once the brainchild of Scott Ambler. The coauthor of 19 books, and counting, he’s not afraid to share his opinion, and the agile methodologies have escaped to a broad audience. As a companion piece to other methodologies, notably [...]
ETL for Healthcare BI
Today, the article “ETL for Healthcare BI” will be published on the BeyeNetwork. It was co-written by a good friend of mine and one of the best ETL architects I know, Rao Nemani. We outlined why ETL is so important, for any BI deployment, but for certain in healthcare. We also included 10 must-do steps [...]
Survey: Trends and Challenges in Platform Administration
Ask a typical BI platform administrator about their responsibilities, and most will concur: too many tasks, never enough resources. Objects to migrate, reports to develop, upgrades to install, mysterious system issues to unravel…the To-Do List can seem endless! If you’re wondering how your BI administration practices stack up, I encourage you to take our Platform [...]
Putting My SSIS Training to Work
After updates and upgrades galore, I was finally able to start my SSIS training this week. So far, it has been relatively simple but I am learning some very valuable information and I am excited to put my training to use. Progress with my scheduling project is halted until I finish this training and am [...]
The Achilles Heel of BI
User adoption is the Achilles heel of Business Intelligence. I read a post recently that estimates user adoption for most deployments is at 10%, in many cases, it’s more like 5%. How can we, as BI professionals, claim ‘success’ if users aren’t adopting our content? (BTW…we can’t). There are many reasons that are given for [...]
Lancet’s Growth Leads to Increased Resourcing Work
Resourcing has become a little overwhelming recently. The growth of the company and the increase in clients and new projects is creating a wealth of resourcing needs. I just started a paper version of the program I am trying to design and implement, and I am not sure how it will be received by the [...]