Category Archives: BI At Large

Ad-hoc reporting – a reality or a myth?

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Ron Keler

The light dims. The large screen in front of you is filled with menus filled with familiar data points, organized and neatly categorized. Here’s your geographical hierarchy. And there are your financial measurements, and over there, date perspectives from the … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large | Tagged ad hoc reporting, analysis, bi software | Comments Off

Time lapse or high speed your business processes with history preservation techniques

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Ron Keler

High speed and time lapse photography are two techniques that allow us to understand the world around us by slowing down or speeding up processes that we could otherwise not be able to observe. High speed photography allows us to … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Data Warehousing | Tagged forecast analysis, forecast time lapse, forecast time warp, high speed data warehousing, History preservation, slowly changing dimensions, snapshots, Time lapse data warehouse | Comments Off

Why Isn’t Data Enrichment A Standard Practice In Every Data Warehousing Project?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Ron Keler

Data enrichment is a terrific way to increase the value proposition of your data warehouse, and yet, it is implemented quite rarely. With data enrichment you can almost overnight provide your sales team with additional mountains of information about the … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Data Warehousing | Tagged Data Enrichment, data warehousing | Comments Off

Abusing the date dimension: when does it make sense to NOT use it

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Ron Keler

The date dimension is a dimensional model staple. You will not find a data mart, data warehouse or any kind of a reporting database that does not have one form or another of a date dimension. The benefits of using … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Data Warehousing | Tagged Date dimension, semantic model, slowly changing dimension, sql date gymnastic | 3 Comments

Connect an Xcelsius dashboard to a public RSS feed using simple jsp proxy – work around cross domain problem

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Ron Keler

Xcelsius has several data connectivity facilities that make it relatively easy for dashboard developers to connect to live data. Web Services and RSS feeds can be used via XML maps, or directly. However, the practical limitation anyone who ever tried … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Xcelsius | Tagged .jsp, cross-domain, RSS Feed, Xcelsius | 2 Comments

Google Public Data Explorer

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Ron Keler

These are exciting and busy times for Business Intelligence at large, and data visualization in particular. It’s hard to keep up with all the innovations in the field. From SAP Xcelsius and Explorer, Microsoft Silverlight, QlikView, mobile players like Roambi … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large | Tagged Data Visualization, DSPL, Google Public Data Explorer | 2 Comments

Why Data Modeling Fall Sideways?

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Ron Keler

One of the most surprising aspects I have come to expect during the years of data integration and warehousing consulting is how little data modeling is actually being practiced in this field. While it is hard to find a database … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Data Warehousing, Universe Design | Tagged BI SDLC, Data modeling, data warehousing | Comments Off

Data Visualization Lesson from 6 Years Old

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Ron Keler

“Daddy, you have a lot of audio, not a lot of photos, a little more apps then photos, and you have free space more than the photos and apps, but not as much as the audio”. That is what my … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large | Tagged Charts, Data Visualization, Design, Graphs, Tables | Comments Off

The dilemma of the expanding and shrinking universe

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Ron Keler

One of the most fundamental questions you will need to answer as you begin designing your meta data strategy can be borrowed from astrophysics. In much the same way that our cosmos adhere to great expending forces that stem from … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Universe Design | Tagged mega universe, Metadata, mini universe, semantic layer, Universe | Comments Off

How I got flash to run on my iPad and iPhone

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Ron Keler

Like so many others, I really like my iPhone and my iPad, but I get very annoyed when I try to browse to a web site that is flash based, or try to even pull up some of my blog … Continue reading →

Posted in BI At Large, Xcelsius | Tagged iPad, iPhone, run flash on iOS, run flash on iPad, run flash on iPhone, run swf on iOS, Xcelsius on iOS | Comments Off