Posts Tagged ‘BI’

Over the course of my career I’ve been lucky enough to have been in charge of both transactional and analytical applications. As such I’ve been able to experience the “burn” of projects on both sides of the candle. Because of this I am acutely aware of the challenges faced in trying to manage the relationship […]

In a world where data is collected for almost everything, companies often find they have trouble figuring out what to do with it. Theoretically companies could report on all their data, however, the larger the dataset gets the more money it will take to setup the infrastructure to support it. For most companies, especially those […]

There was a recent post in the HBR blogs that stated that ‘Success comes from better data, not better data analysis’. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/08/success_comes_from_better_data.html While this sounds cliche, it is a fact and we tend to ignore the value of quality data. Nowadays firms invest on hiring some of the best analysts in the industry with the […]

If you happen to install PowerPivot on a SharePoint server that has prior SQL Server installation (SQL engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services etc.) you will run into problems.   You may see error that the installation was unable to register Microsoft.AnalysisServices.SharePoint.Integration.dll assembly. Or if you are really lucky, you may get by far more helpful […]

I was struck by a blog post written by Forrester’s Rob Karel (@rbkarel), titled “How Complete are your BI and Data Management Strategies?” This is the type of answer that our business intelligence consultants ask our clients every day, and we often come up with a framework as complete and strategic as the ideal one […]

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 […]

Business intelligence is a pretty strong buzz word right now, and for good reason. So many companies are jumping on the bandwagon, investing funds into BI because it can provide unique business insights that drive efficiencies, speedier decision-making, and mobility, among other benefits. This is particularly true for the retail sector, where operations such as […]

It is almost impossible to have a conversation about Business Intelligence these days without talking about mobility. Mobile internet and data consumption is growing rapidly and it doesn’t look like that is going to change any time soon. There are many mobility options to choose from but not all of them work on all mobile […]

Everyone agrees that taking business intelligence mobile adds flexibility and versatility to access to information. On the road or out in the field, access to data and analytics is increasingly mobile, and for good reason. Access to business data on the fly is making us more efficient and helping us make decisions faster and more […]

Problem: During one of my projects I found that the SSAS query log table seemed to be periodically getting truncated. I would notice this because I would run some queries against the cube, watch them get logged into the logging table, and then a few hours later they would be gone! I could not figure […]

Have you ever used the SSAS out of the box functionality to log queries? This can be used to see how many queries are run, how long each query runs, and which users are running the queries. If not, check out this blog for a description of some dashboards that can be created from this […]

One of the most popular questions after an SSAS cube is moved into production and users begin accessing the data is, “Who’s using the cube?” It makes sense right? After spending a lot of time and money getting an analysis cube built, who wouldn’t want to know what the usage was like? Luckily, there is […]