Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

In Part I of this post I talked a little bit about what I think it takes to get started in the world of blogging. In this post I would like to talk more about some of the challenges related to running your own blog. To that end I would like to answer a few questions that people have asked me, and perhaps one or two that people have not asked but maybe should have. Continue reading “Blogging For Dollars? Or Something Else?”

There have been a couple of issues discovered with my universe compare tool. One has been fixed in the code, and the other appears to be a universe issue which I have not been able to decide how to approach. An update to version 2.0.1 has been posted, so please download this updated version if you have been experiencing issues.

Context Issue

The first issue was rather generic. The message was Automation error: The server threw an exception. It seemed to happen while the code was looping through a collection of joins or contexts for some universes, although it had never happened to me during my usage. (Of course, isn’t that always the case?) One user was able to send me a copy of their universe for my testing and I was able to recreate the error which is always the first step towards a resolution. Continue reading “Dagira Change Log Utility 2.0.1 Released”

Steve, Michael, Amy, Susan and I got together with Eric Vallo and several other folks at the conference last week to talk about the origin of BOB. Amy and Susan were the co-moderators of the mailing list that became what we know as BOB today. Steve and Michael are current BOB moderators and were part of the initial discussions when we discussed options for transitioning into something beyond the list. The five of us had a great time reminiscing about how BOB came about.

Have a listen!

I did not do much blogging at the conference this year, primarily because I was always doing something! I had two presentations on Monday, followed by an interview session with ASUG News on Tuesday morning, followed by my participation in the Leadership 2.0 session Tuesday afternoon, the BI 4.0 launch celebration Tuesday night, a usability study for an interesting new potential product this morning, and my flight home. 😯 Over the next few days I will attempt to turn my notes taking at the various sessions into blog posts, as well as upload my two sessions for download both here and on the conference web site.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you that took the time to come up to me at the conference and say how much you appreciated either BOB or my blog. As long as I have been doing this sort of stuff (on BOB we will be celebrating our 10-year anniversary next year) hearing from people never ever gets old. Thank you for taking the time to let me know that you have been helped in some fashion.

I gave away one of the last remaining BOB hats at my session yesterday. Just another reason to try to come to the SAP Business Objects conference next year.

They added an additional day next year to focus on analytics. Still getting information on what that means as far as extra cost and what content will look like.

Are you attending the SAP Business Objects user conference in Orlando next week? If so, look for an email soon inviting you to a special lunchtime panel discussion on social media, influence, and leadership called “Leadership 2.0” and featuring folks such as Cindi Howson, Lisa Leslie, Timo Elliott, and … somehow… me. 🙂 Reservations will be required as space is limited to the first 100 people to sign up. I think they’re planning on sending out an email to all folks registered for the conference, but you can get a jump on reserving your spot by going to the reservation page.

The panel will run from 12:30 to 2:30pm on Tuesday, October 11^th and will include a lunch. The Twitter hash tag for the event will be #L2dot0.

Added Information
If you’re not attending the conference, you can still participate. There is a dial-in number where you can listen, and you can post questions via the hashtag mentioned above. Here’s the call information:

Participant Access Instructions – Dial in 5-10 minutes prior to start time using the Participant Phone Number and Participant Passcode.
Participant Passcode: 690937

Toll-Free Phone Number (United States/Canada): 877-702-9054
Toll Phone Number (International): 913-312-1229

Earlier this year I got to see Web Intelligence 4.0 documents on an iPad. It was one of my few tweet-worthy nuggets that I shared from the BI 4.0 launch event. A few weeks ago I started building out some reports for a co-worker so we could experiment with MOBI and see just how well it worked in our environment. Along the way I picked up a copy of the “known limitations” document from SAP. Some of them are big, perhaps even show-stoppers for many folks. Continue reading “Web Intelligence on iPad – Not Ready For Prime Time Yet”