Microsoft has finally decided what to do with PerformancePoint Planning
A while back Microsoft created quite a stir in the BI scene when they announced that they would stop further development of PerformancePoint Server 2007. At the time I was studying for the exam and, as you can imagine, was pretty pissed off (and stopped any further preparations for the exam immediately). The analytics part was swiftly moved to SharePoint and what was to become of the Planning part was unknown, until now.
One thing that might be confusing about using the Web Intelligence Rich Client
With the arrival of BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 the ability to view documents via a so-called Rich Client has been added to the suite. While the Rich Client might appear to be nothing more than a full client version (it requires a separate installation) of the Java version of Web Intelligence in InfoView, it does in fact have certain features that are not available in thin client version.
Teradata and SAP partner up
A few months ago there were speculations about the possibility of SAP acquiring a data warehouse company like Teradata or Netezza. It seems those speculations weren’t that far-fetched, as the news of the day is that SAP and Teradata are partnering up to support SAP BW on top of Teradata. Up until now SAP BW was only able to run on top of Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server or IBM DB2. Adding Teradata to the gamma could potentially be profitable for both parties as it could increase Teradata’s sales and at the same time provide another strong and scalable platform for SAP applications.
MDX humour
MDX is God’s gift to business language; When God created Adam and Eve he just spoke [Humanity].[All Members].Children . That’s how powerful MDX is.
Amen to that, Pedro Alves!
New category (ABDOP) feed added
I noticed that most people who visit my blog do so because they are searching for BI related content using a search engine and end up here through the links in their search result.
User rights in XI 3.x
I’d never really considered doing this when working with user rights in an Enterprise environment, but now that I’m thinking about it, it does make sense.
When setting security for a single user, a best practice is to create a group first, then apply the desired security rights to the group and add the user to that group. Rather than applying rights to individual users each time a new user requires the same privileges, the administrator can simply add them to the group, thus saving administrative time.
Gartner evaluates the reporting capabilities of nine BI vendors
Gartner put the reporting capabilities of nine BI vendors to the test a while back. The results can be found in a fairly elaborate, 28 pages long, report with the dramatic title Critical Capabilities for Business Intelligence Reporting. MicroStrategy Report Services gets its share of positive feedback in it, which is probably why it is available for free on the MicroStrategy web site. You can grab your copy here, after having completed the registration process.
Cognos 8.4 FP1 is out
A colleague of mine told me yesterday that Fix Pack 1 for Cognos 8.4 was released.
8.4 Fix Pack 1 is a version of IBM Cognos 8 aimed at upgrading existing Cognos 8 customers. It includes updates to 8.4 BI Server, Metric, Go! Dashboard, Go! Search and Go! Mobile.
And it only took around, what, four years?
I’m flicking through the notes I’ve been making for the past half year or so on the XI 3.x version of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, because I’m preparing for the upgrade exam (Wednesday is the big day).
BI history
The Microsoft BI team uploaded a video to YouTube about the history of my field of expertise. It’s a bit flashy, but useful if you’re new to the business or want to explain to someone else what it is you’re exactly doing. Read more