Peter Scott - Rittman Mead (Page 4)

OWB quirkiness

Recently, I mentioned a quirk in OWB 10.2 with a dimension table target configured as a type 2 slowly changing dimension. We have been working on some load performance problems with straight-forward OWB maps. As part of this investigation we wanted to change some of the hints being used

Technical

Used unused indexes

One of my old customers had a data warehouse with a three-area design model: a staging area for data load/cleanse, a third normal form (or more 3-NF-like than dimensional) raw data layer and a denormalised dimensional layer containing aggregated data for reporting. They ran a retail business and one

Technical

A flat world

A lot of data warehouses get some (if not all) of their data feeds through data files; in fact I can't recall a recent project where at least one feed from an external system did not arrive as some form of flat file. I have had customers whose

Another thing I forgot...

When setting up my new PC was that I should down load the OWB reporting add in for SQL Developer. I used to use this tool in preference to using the web reporting from the repository [http://pjsrandom.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/owb-sqldev.png] I have long been a

Technical

Virtually there

I have a couple of days between assignments so I am spending a little time doing research. Ultimately, there is a piece to write on Oracle 11g OLAP, and some course notes on aspects of data warehousing. But do this sort of thing I need to get myself set up

Technical

My first week at Rittman Mead Consulting

Well, it was not spent in San Francisco! I spent a couple of days working through some best practices for a group developing a new management information system on OBI SE-One and then spent the rest of the week trekking between home and hospital where my younger girl had her

Technical

BI information security

These days there are a wealth of restrictions or regulations (SOX, UK Data Protection Act to name but two) on data access and coupled with the simple commercial need to hide sensitive information that means unfettered access to data warehouse data is a thing of the past. Fortunately products such

More BI consolidation

As widely predicted the number of independent reporting tool vendors has diminished. Today's takeover target is Cognos [http://www.cognos.com/] (who fell into the arms of IBM for 5 billion USD). With the earlier assimilation of Proclarity (Microsoft); Hyperion, Siebel Analytics & Sigma Dynamics (Oracle); and Business

UKOUG December 07

The whole Oracle world seems to be congregating in San Francisco for a few days of talk, meetings and events. But I am reminded that another event is on the horizon; the UKOUG's annual conference in Birmingham from December 3 to the 6. Now, that is only 3

A new life

Yesterday was my last day working for a multi-billion dollar, many thousand employee multinational telephone and IT services organisation. I am now working with Mark Rittman and Jon Mead as part of Rittman Mead Consulting. Mark has already [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2007/10/24/peter-scott-joining-rittman-mead-consulting/] outlined [https://www.

Upgrading and patching

Doug Burns writes [http://oracledoug.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1330-The-Reality-Gap-1-Software-Maintenance.html] , amongst other things, about a straw poll at a user group meeting on the number up to date on Oracle CPU patching. One of Doug's earlier questions was about the numbers that had all of their

Technical

Winding down

In addition to moving my responsibilities to other managers, I have been tying up the odd technical loose end. During the recent upgrade to 10gR2 for one of our DW customers we noticed a frequent query that queried for raw sales for a named customer over a rolling 12 week

My new role

Last week I mentioned [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2007/10/17/getting-back-into-focus/] a new role and said that I could say more about it this week. Well the time has come to reveal a little more. On Friday 9 November I will be leaving my current employer to go

Data quality thoughts

My e-friend, Beth, has been busy posting from the Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas. She holds dear the belief that data is key, and quality data is the master key. I think saying it like that is putting words into her mouth, but hopefully I am not distorting

Getting back into focus

I have been working with my previous company for more than a dozen years - over that time the name on the sign over the office entrance has changed many times, and is indeed about to change yet again but a lot of the people have remained constant. My role,

Technical

Converting partition views to partitioned tables

A few days I was talking to a customer who has a legacy data warehouse, designed back in Oracle 7.3 days which relies extensively on partition views as a way of handling the volume of data involved (basket level sales from a national high-street chain). Over the years the

Less than two months to UKOUG

Doug Burns once said to me (and I hope he does not mind me misquoting him) that he values the UKOUG [http://conference.ukoug.org/] annual conference (December 2007, Birmingham) highly enough to give up his own time (and earnings) to attend. I think I know what he means. For

Oracle Shopping

Stock holders hopes that Oracle might counter-bid against SAP for Business Objects fades as Oracle offer to spend many billions on BEA systems… (or so say [http://today.reuters.com/investing/FinanceArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2007-10-12T111255Z_01_N12227680_RTRIDST_0_BEASYSTEMS-ORACLE-UPDATE-1.XML] Reuters) I need to think about

Uncommitting committed sins

I overheard one of my team requesting a DBA to restore a table from backup following an overzealous data deletion incident. I thought the chances of him getting them to take on a single table restore on that database was slim given their current workload and the fact that that

BI tools market

Three weeks ago I wrote [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2007/09/19/my-topic-today-is/] that the for sale sign was up at Business Objects, Mark Rittman [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/] (who seems to be turning into a newshound with other hot topical stories such as Tom Kyte's

Diagnosing problems

Sometimes, when things are not working as they should the human brain goes into straw clutching mode. In extreme cases this includes guilt-by-association scenario where a benign event that occurred at around the same time is blamed for something happening or if not blamed causes a large amount of lost

Technical

Bye-bye Oracle 9.2

Well the detailed planning for a customer's data warehouse upgrade paid off. We kept mainly to plan until the customer tried using their query tool. We then spent what seemed an age, late at night, tracking down a problem which almost had the customer deciding to revert to

Technical

Looking at the unstructured

Curt Monash has been talking about text mining [http://www.dbms2.com/2007/10/05/the-four-horsemen-of-data-warehousing/] a lot this week, he also notes [http://www.dbms2.com/2007/10/05/the-four-horsemen-of-data-warehousing/] that, from a text point of view, that the four preeminent database vendors (data store not query tool) are

Technical

Data-centric BI trends

I managed to miss Mark Rittman's recent keynote addresses in two locations this week, but I did take a look at the slide deck and the blog [https://www.rittmanmead.com/blog/2007/10/05/five-oracle-bi-trends-for-the-future/] post. Mark is making five very sound points on the Oracle BI

Technical

Table compression

As I mentioned yesterday I was in London (in fact in the shadows of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament) today for the UK OUG BIRT SIG meeting. The venue was also shared by a UK OUG directors meeting so I got the opportunity to chat to Peter Robson