Posts Tagged ‘BI Generic Architectures’

We’re constantly looking for ways to streamline the BI development process.  Data mapping (source to target) can be a complex and cumbersome process due to: Ongoing model changes – the target moves! Poor (or “loose”) communication between those mapping and the development team. Lack of consistency in collecting and documenting mappings (Excel, I’m looking at […]

In our standards XEM file (extended model definition), I’ve added column ordering functionality by categorizing each column and then ordering the categories. Column groups are defined in a BaseColumn template.  We have:   PRIM,0,%Primary% ROWMETA,3,%extIsRowDateMeta% META,4,%extIsMetaColumn% AKNONMETA,1,%AllKeys% BASE,2,TRUE  

To build a custom plugin in groovy, do this.  I know this seems redundant, but it wasn’t as clear as it should have been. 1. Create a project directory.  Just a plain ol’ directory. Wherever you like. 2. Add the source file subdirectories: src\main\groovy\…  (with the package path you’d like to use.  We have src\main\groovy\com\perficient\gradle) […]

Quick tip of the day: Use Gradle plugins to package up functionality for easy reuse.  For example, we developed a simple “database” plugin to handle the common tasks associated with building and upgrading a database.  Things like: build – create a new database from scratch. Runs the CREATE DATABASE and sqlcmd’s the full DDL upgrade […]

While the Gradle manual is extensive, since we’re not building an executable or the like from source code, many of the concepts are a little opaque.  Here’s a quick primer on Gradle for BI: Gradle is “project” based, with each project containing a set of inter-dependent tasks which in turn contain actions: The whole thing […]

I’m always striving to lower the wall between design and implementation.  In BI, this means taking as much of the data architect and business analyst’s work and applying it directly to the data management process (without the developer or administrator middlemen).  Here’s some opportunities: Model builds – Your modeling tool should be able to produce […]

Selecting and deploying a test management system is probably one of the hardest topics in BI mainly due to the lack of lightweight, easy to use test management frameworks well suited to BI.  Most of the mature test management suites target application and, most recently, web application development.  And that’s not all that useful for […]

Development management (or more traditionally “project management”) is concerned with identifying, scheduling, and tracking development workload.  I’ve started to differentiate development management from project management in line with the trend in many larger organizations who have tackled project portfolio management as a discipline. Basically, project management focuses on cost, risk, and value to the organization […]

I love Business Intelligence. I love hard numbers and charts. I love the flexibility it provides and the problems it helps solve. I am a Business Intelligence junkie. However, for all my enthusiasm about Pareto charts, scatter plots and what-if analyses there is one saying that reins it in heavily. “Just because nobody complains doesn’t […]

Welcome to part 3 of the “Managing BI Performance Problems series.” Last time I discussed the importance of indexing and how approach it. But I also said that indexing, while cheap and easy, could only solve cheap and easy problems. So then, how to address more complicated problems with performance? The first answer is aggregate […]