Posts Tagged ‘BI’

On a recent project, I was faced with a requirement to scan the contents of a folder and load all the files into their respective staging tables. There were multiple file types – Customer file, Store file, Products file, Sales file, etc. Every day, we received zero to many files for each type of file. […]

The personal computer, internet, digital music players (think ipods), smart phones, tablets are just a few of the disruptive technologies that have become common place in our lifetime.   What is consistent about these technology disruptions is that they all have changed the way we work, live, and play.  Whole industries have grown up around these technologies.   […]

IBM Cognos TM1 is well-known as the planning, analysis, and forecasting software that delivers flexible solutions to address requirements across an enterprise, as well as provide real-time analytics, reporting, and what-if scenario modeling and Perficient is well-known for delivering expertly designed TM1 based solutions. Analytic Projects Perhaps phase zero of a typical analytics project would […]

Last week, we held a webinar, The Modern Data Warehouse – A Hybrid Story. As the world of data evolves ever so quickly, it transforms the industry and creates a need for new approaches to business intelligence. Data warehousing technology that worked well for years, serving its purpose to manage and understand business driven data, […]

One of the common HR reporting needs is to determine the Utilization and Availability of employees. These metrics may also be studied at a higher level. For example, checking Workforce Utilization Percentages across a company’s different organizations provides insight into how overstaffed or understaffed each organization is. This blog describes an OBIEE design methodology to […]

In Framework Manager, an expression is any combination of operators, constants, functions, and other components that evaluates to a single value. You can build expressions to create calculation and filter definitions. A calculation is an expression that you use to create a new value from existing values contained within a data item. A filter is […]

A report that uses multiple facts may be prompted on dimensions that are not necessarily conforming to all the facts. At first one may think such a functionality is not valid. This posting demonstrates how such reporting requirements are common and are achievable in OBIEE though not in a very straightforward manner. It is a […]

Organizations of all sizes are looking more seriously at the cloud, and beginning to understand the scalability and cost savings benefits of a hybrid solution. Given the benefits of a properly implemented hybrid solution, it’s logical to consider other areas of the business that can gain from the cloud – one of those being your […]

A session parameter is a variable that IBM Cognos Framework Manager associates with a particular session. Examples include (current user name, current active language, current date and time, and others). Parameter maps are a method for substituting different values with different keys. A parameter map can be thought of as simple data “look-up table”. Each […]

One of the goals of the Cognos Framework Manager modeler is to build a model that makes report authoring easier. To accomplish that, you “build in” business logic” (a loosely defined term here) into your meta model. This business logic can be simple (like simply renaming or hiding a database table column) or quite complex […]

During a recent project of mine, I jumped “head first” into IBM Cognos Framework Manager. Yes, it is an awesome tool, but where exactly does it “fit” into the Cognos environment? Are there similar or alternate tools that can be used? I just had to have a quick look! The Cognos Components       […]

A proven practice for Framework Manager Meta Modeling is to divide your model into a series of layers, each layer having a specific purpose. (Originally IBM recommended the use of two layers (data and modeling), but later added a presentation layer, and (optionally) a separate dimensional layer). The layers should be: The top layer – […]