23 posts from: How to Achieve Great BI with Oracle Business Intelligence
Oracle Open World Presentations
(Indexed 2010-08-30):
I'm giving two presentations this year at OOW. One is technical for performance tuning, and the other is a case study on a really cool project I'm leading right now.
Presentation this week at Collaborate in Vegas
(Indexed 2010-04-19):
I'm flying up to Vegas to give a presentation on High Performance OBI this week for OAUG Collaborate trade show. It'll be Thursday morning in Lagoon H @ 9:45am - stop by if you'll be attending!
Moved to a different site!
(Indexed 2010-01-06):
I'm in the process of moving this blog from IT Toolbox to WordPress. They simply have more tools to offer, especially better editing capabilities including images and file uploads. I also now intend to get more into How-To's and not just theory and best practices.I've already posted a few new topics over there, and as I migrate the posts from here (I call them Classic Posts) I'll also clean them up a bit.Jeff
Turning Oracle Answers "On"
(Indexed 2010-01-06):
I have a new post on my main blog site about what it takes to enable Answers/Ad-hoc access to OBI. Its more than many people think.
In the Market for OBIEE Consultants? You'll Get What You Pay For
(Indexed 2009-04-03):
What are you really getting for that cut rate independent contractor you just hired for your OBIEE project? What about the small consulting firm you've done business with for years for your eBiz work and now they say (me too!) they can do OBIEE? And finally, the ubiquitous offshore firms who will claim to do any project for about $20. This post is a breakdown of why these are poor options and why you'll be paying more in the long-run.
Differences with Approach to Building BI Applications and Data Warehouses
(Indexed 2009-02-27):
Today Id like to comment a bit on the differences between BI and Data Warehousing as I believe they are commonly confused and used interchangeably. Having just come from a project which mixed the two together with poor results, I think some discussion on the topic is a good idea and one that is fresh in my head. This is a long post, so go get some coffee (or Red Bull) first.
OBIEE on Vista 64-bit with IIS 7.0
(Indexed 2009-02-09):
How to get OBI working on this unsupported platform
A Dashboard Environment Plan
(Indexed 2008-06-03):
I think the process of how to go about designing a good dashboard is one of the more challenging things to do in a BI project. Why? Simply because there is never one right answer there are many ways to satisfy a need and each works to varying degrees of success.
Is BI About Stupid UI Tricks?
(Indexed 2008-05-23):
I see all too many posts and clients why try to make OBI's UI jump through hopps to achieve some minor tweak in user experience. There are two reasons not to do this.
Functional Expertise in a Technical BI Consultant
(Indexed 2008-04-30):
I think there is a common misconception out there about what skills a BI consultancy should have. Customers and others I meet during trade shows always seem to primarily focus on industry experience, functional experience, and even geography capability. Domain experience in BI, Data Warehousing, BI Tools, Dimensional Modeling, ETL, BI Apps, etc. is what you should be focusing on adding to your team for your BI projects, as it is your greatest need.
Oracle's BI Apps vs. 100% Custom
(Indexed 2008-03-17):
I just completed a study comparing the time and effort savings when deploying a BI Apps project vs. doing it all on your own.
BI Apps Presentation in The Netherlands
(Indexed 2008-02-07):
Sorry for being quiet of late - things have been crazy busy at Metricsphere with a bunch of new projects coming down the line. Next Tuesday I am delivering a presentation at a session hosted by Oracle EBS Marketing in De Meern, The Netherlands about the BI Applications. It will be a modified version of the Oracle Open World presentation called Breaking Down the BI Apps. Check out the link
Oracle Open World
(Indexed 2007-09-18):
Oracle Open World is all set for this year in San Francisco from November 11th-15th . Metricsphere will be there in full force; come by booth #3348 in Moscone West and say "hi". My schedule for presenting has finally been set. I'll be giving two presentations on Thursday morning, one called How to Achieve Great Performance with OBI EE in Marriott Salon 7 at 1
Using Report Specs for Requirements
(Indexed 2007-07-20):
Time and time again we at Metricsphere are asked to come in and migrate some reports from one tool into Oracle BI. Find out why using a modern BI tool for a simple UI replacement project is akin to hiring a Ninja to trim your hedges.
New Blog from a Colleague
(Indexed 2007-07-03):
Gerard Braat, a colleague of mine with Metricsphere in Amsterdam, has just started his blog on Oralce's BI Applications. Gerard has a tremendous amount of knowledge about the Oracle BI products and applications. I suggest if you are interested in all things BI Apps to take a look at his site.Jeff
Oracle's BI Applications (Part 2)
(Indexed 2007-06-27):
Part 2 of a 2 part series on Oracle's BI Applications. In Part 1, I discussed the what's and why's of BI Applications. In this second part, I will focus more on some concerns that you may have about the BI applications. Common MisconceptionsBefore I cover the Cons of the Buy decision, I want to discuss a few common misconceptions. It works only with the pre-built data sources: The Oracle BI A
Oracle's BI Applications (Part 1)
(Indexed 2007-06-27):
OBI EE (Siebel Analytics) is a powerful enterprise capable BI/Reporting/Analysis tool that is rapidly gaining solid market share and recognition. This is despite Siebel's (and to a lesser extent) Oracle's lack of marketing it is a pure play platform. The will sell it to you, but it's not really their focus. If so, then what is? The answer is BI Applications. BI Applications, whether you believe it or not, are the future of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Just as the mid siz
The Importance of Naming Standards
(Indexed 2007-05-02):
Ah, Naming Standards. IT loves to talk about naming standards, particularly when they're talking about databases or code modules. In such a world, naming standards allow other developers to more quickly pick up on a piece of code or a database design and be productive understanding it more quickly. They can also help yourself out, after you revisit a piece of old code or database that you worked on 3 years ago. Years ago when I was developing C and PL/SQL, I was all about "self documenting c
Header and Detail Options
(Indexed 2007-03-16):
Modeling Header & Details in OBI EE /* Font Definitions */ @font-face{font-family:Wingdings;panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}@font-face{font-family:Verdana;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{margin:
OBI EE and Oracle Data Mining
(Indexed 2007-02-19):
Having recently attended one of Oracle's coming out parties for its new Data Mining software, I thought I'd take the opportunity while its still fresh in my head to talk about how the two work together in Oracle's vision of BI.First off, what is Data Mining and how is it different from traditional Business Intelligence? Without getting into too much of a detailed discussion, Data Mining is the practice of extracting hidden knowledge out of a dataset to aid you in the decision making process.
Achieving Good Performance With Analytics
(Indexed 2007-01-30):
How do you extract good performance from Oracle Business Analytics? Are there any tool specific features that can be used to achieve better performance, or is it all about the backend? This post will discuss some things to consider to make a page or report perform well; scalability is not included here.Division of LaborThe first thing to recognize with OBI/SA is where the heavy lifting gets done. Analytics is a ROLAP engine, which means it is a
Subject Area Planning (Part 1)
(Indexed 2007-01-08):
As the stating point for any content creation with Oracle's BI suite (Siebel Analytics), Subject Areas, also called Presentation Catalogs, require a good deal of thought and planning to properly match what each user community's needs with underlying capability. Although there is no one right way to organize and structure your collection of subject areas, I will discuss some concepts and theories that you should consider for your system. In this first of a 2 part entry, I'll go over what your S...(truncated)...
Over Reliance on the RPD
(Indexed 2006-12-15):
One of the more common causes of problems with projects I see as a consultant is the over reliance on OBI (Siebel Analytics) instead of ETL. Over the years I've been brought into a few red accounts when I was at Siebel and now with Metricsphere where the RPD configuration was way too complicated. We must remember that Analytics is a tool, and all tools have limitations. Push too hard on the tool, and it will break, or almost as bad, it will become an unmanageable, unmaintainable mess that wil...(truncated)...