Making Information Visible

MobileBI Vendors

Shane Gibson — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 09:18:18 +0000

As we are researching our go to market for MobileBI in New Zealand, we are looking at all the product offerings available globally out there at the moment.

So far we have found:

So does anybody have any experiences of implementing these in New Zealand you would like to share?

Doco on Goldengate / Oracle Data Integrator integration

Shane Gibson — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:38:22 +0000

Looking for info on how to utilise Oracle Golden Gate and ODI together. Official doco is here:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E14571_01/integrate.1111/e12644/ogg.htm

This chapter describes how to work with Oracle GoldenGate in order to capture changes on source transactional systems and replicate them in a staging server for consumption by Oracle Data Integrator interfaces.

Sorting out SAS Addin and Pivot training for new users

Shane Gibson — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:41:42 +0000

Currently sorting out a resource to create training material for new users.

A lot of the clients users are unfamiliar with both Excel and the EDW Content, not to mention SAS.

So we are aiming for a simple user guide that shows users how to access Information Maps via Excel Pivots and another on how to access OLAP Cubes via Excel Pivot tables.

Then lastly a little more in-depth training material on how to use Excel Pivot tables with any sort of data.

Moving SAS Servers

Shane Gibson — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:38:07 +0000

Moving the SAS 9.2 environment from the old SAN based server to a new server with a dedicated disk array, to resolve some I/O issues under high load. Will be using shadow copy to automate the move across machines as it manages the swap out of drivers etc for the new hardware.

BI/DW Architecture

Shane Gibson — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:35:19 +0000

Currently working on a developing a BI/DW technical architecture to define how we will manage an environment with multiple ETL and Reporting tools.

Will feed into the Enterprise Information Management and Reporting Strategy we are working on.

Configuring SAS ROLAP – Solving Excel Pivot Size Issues

Shane Gibson — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:29:33 +0000

Had some issues with users using the SAS Addin for Microsoft Office against Info Maps where the size of the Excel file gets massive when you save it.

It seems Excel must be caching the data somewhere.

We are working on configuring SAS OLAP cubes in ROLAP mode as this removes the size issues with Excel.

Re-branding the Portal Theme

Shane Gibson — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:44:56 +0000

We are re-branding the project after the successful completion of decommissioning the old Data Warehouse environment at the end of the month. So we are currently changing the SAS Portal theme to match the new brand.

SAS 9.2 not supported on Windows 2008 R2 – yet!

Shane Gibson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:28:02 +0000

Just found out Windows 2008 R2 is not currently supported for SAS 9.2, but it seems to work on the test install I did.

Making Reports Faster

Shane Gibson — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:40:37 +0000

We are using a combination of SAS Web Report Studio, for report creation/rendering and an Oracle database for data storage.

When users run reports, they effectively invoke this process:

Connect to metadata and obtain authorisation
Access info map and generate query
Pass query to Oracle
Oracle passes data to WRS
WRS renders report

To make this faster we have been looking at configuring report scheduling to see if we can pre-cache the reports

Enterprise Information Management and Reporting Strategy

Shane Gibson — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:29:25 +0000

Starting work on a business case for an Enterprise Information Management and Reporting Strategy.

Similiar to a BI Strategy but needs to include unstructured data management as well as lot more focus on people and process than BI reporting tools.