StratexBlog - Comments

pfoliomanagement comments on Another Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 demo

pfoliomanagement — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:49:40 +0000

Portfolio managers have a great deal of responsibility within an organization; not only do they have to be mindful of individuals responsible for managing portfolio components, but they also have to be mindful of executive management, which sets the strategy.

Nathan Griffiths comments on Getting a Cube's last processed date

Nathan Griffiths — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:00:20 +0000

To get the same cube metadata as displayed in SQL Management Studio, you can use the DISCOVER_XML_METADATA request in an XMLA query like so:

DISCOVER_XML_METADATA

SSAS - Premium and Claims V2
PDW04 1
ReferenceOnly

Note you need to specify the cube ID (in this case "PDW04 1") instead of the cube name ().

Mark Woodall comments on Labels and Names in PPS Models

Mark Woodall — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:22:37 +0000

Oh, and I forgot to mention, the Excel assignment form LABEL which you define when publishing as form template is important. Keep it unique and simple remembering case sensitive issues, then, if you need to edit it or replace it, you can publish the new form from Excel and use the SAME label and it will overwrite the one in the PPS forms table, so that next time a user user opens the assignment they will see your edited data entry form.

Jason Francis-Sutton comments on The Seven Deadly Sins of Balanced Scorcard and BI Implementations

Jason Francis-Sutton — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:00:31 +0000

I fully agree with the thoughts on this and for me there are a couple of other things to consider.

The first is 'Consumption', many people when looking at BI & Balanced Scorecard solutions look for a nice presentation to show to their friends and colleagues. This only confuses the reason for the technologies/methodologies and can leave you feeling like you have just had a Chinese take-away or McDonalds, which looks great and tastes great, but you consume it quickly and it leaves you feeling hungry again after 30 minutes. The trick is to make sure you have the depth and breadth of a solution to fill the hunger for business information.

The other point to consider is 'the in-flight magazine syndrome', which is something senior exec's can sometimes be accused of. The in-flight magazine can be good for updating you on new locations and what's on in different places but it also has adverts for solutions which claim to be the best or number one in what they do. The suppliers who claim this may be right, but when the exec comes off the plane and contacts their CIO and states they must have it because its number one and will resolve their problems it's a hard discussion to have. Choosing the book by its cover does not always give you the content you require.

Jason Francis-Sutton
Head of Business Intelligence
Homeloan Management Limited

MarkW comments on How to make CorBusiness easier to manage

MarkW — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:37:11 +0000

I have been reminded that CorBusiness will always need a knowledge library when it is accessing data from a database - even SQLServer. This is true, but my intention is to reduce the complexity by making it a very simple knowledge library. If the SQLServer data warehouse is designed efficiently with only the necessary fields and tables, then there is no need for virtual tables, join keys or 'new linking', for datatype overrides, fancy column formulae etc. Some Knowledge libraries get huge, and impact severely on query performance and editing. So keep your KL small and simple.