The Authors

Ron Keler – About Me

For the last ten years I have been delivering impossible Business Intelligence solutions to companies large and small. From data warehousing and data integration to reports, dashboards and BI embedded applications, I continue to evolve my BI skills and deepen my knowledge of the leading BI tools. Prior to my current consulting work, I spent a year as an IT project manager for a major financial newspaper and three years as a data analyst for a supply chain/spend management company, mining data for global 1000 companies. I began my career with an educational software company, where over the nine years I spent there, I played a key role in growing and evolving the company into one of the largest educational content publisher in the world.

Contact me at: ron@bihappyblog.com

Visit my company at: www.cleartelligence.com

12 Responses to The Authors

  1. Rox says:

    Hello,
    I have a variable that shows me the most recent event Date and it displays the correct results.
    =FormatDate( Max([Raw Data].[Event Start Date/Time]) ; “MM/dd/yyyy”)

    Now, I want to display the event Name that corresponds to the event Date and nothing seems to work. I’ve tried Max(Event Name) but that doesn’t show me the most recent event name, nor does it match the event Date formula that’s above.
    So, for example, I’m looking for: Jane Doe participated in Walking the dogs 2009 and Running the dogs 2014. So her most recent participation is 2014. The date will return correctly in the report but I also want to include the Name of the event.
    Any thoughts?
    Thanks 🙂

    • Ron Keler says:

      How about something like =[Event Name] where ([Event Start Date/Time]=Max([Raw Data].[Event Start Date/Time]))

      • Rox says:

        Hello,

        I tried that and it didn’t work. 🙁
        In theory that’s what I’m looking for, but it’s not working…

        • Ron Keler says:

          Rox, there are limits to how much the data can be transformed in webi, and in many cases you will need to push the work upstream to the universe/database layer. This might be one of those cases.. Any modern enterprise database will have windowing/statistical function you can use to accomplish the calculation you are looking for relatively easily.

  2. Sheikh says:

    How can i subscribe to your website so i get the notification of a new blog immedietely.

  3. Really really interesting blog. I was looking for new features about SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 and PHP with BI Services and I found all I wanted. Just awesome, simply and clever.

    Regards,

  4. Tim Hansen says:

    Hi Ron! Just found your blog this morning and it’s fantastic. I have spent over 20 years in the BI space and your blog is the first too truly push the boundaries of the technologies. Thanks!

    One challenge we are currently faced with at First Solar is Webi integration with Sharepoint. All we need to do is render a Webi report without the toolbars. I have found some JavaScript to turn off the toolbars, but it doesn’t play nice in Sharepoint. Do you have any techniques for this?

    • Ron Keler says:

      Thank you Tim. Some initial thoughts about this:
      Do you have to use webi, or is Crystal an option? You will have more control over the report viewer with the Crystal RAS SDK. The webi rebean SDK might also provide you good options, though i’m not sure you will be able to manipulate the viewer to the degree you need. Another idea is to try and use some divs to “hide” the portions of the viewer you don’t want to display (i have a post describing this technique). Finally, you might be better served with writing a custom sharepoint component that can source data from a webi powered web services. There are probably a few more options, but without knowing more about the specifics of your situation, it’s hard to tell… Is this an internal corporate website? External? What’s the purpose of the reporting, etc. Please feel free to reach out to me directly via email if you like to continue this conversation. Thanks – Ron

    • Ron Keler says:

      Of course, i neglected to mention the obvious: the SharePoint integration kit. I assume none of the components it offers were a fit for you, otherwise, you should definitely check it out first.

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