Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

There are so many things going on; I don’t know where to start. Some of the events are more global than others.

• XI 3.1 SP2 has been released. Dallas Marks has already provided details about the release. Tom Nather also posted that it’s lacking some fix packs.
• I just finished going through an Xcelsius training class. Expect to see some blog posts on it soon. 🙂
• DFW local user group meeting is coming up on Tuesday. I was scheduled to present but they moved the date which left me with a conflict. Now I don’t have a conflict, so I get to go.
  
• Voting for the 2009 BOB Member of the Year will open shortly. I have to finish checking the nominations and get the voting page ready to go. BOB members that have been registered for more than 90 days can vote.
• “Early Bird” registration for the 2009 GBN Annual Conference in Dallas expires on August 21st. You don’t want to miss “Return of the Variables” do you? 🙂
  

There is more potential news to come, but that’s what I have for now. I am also going to be taking some vacation soon. Don’t worry, I have some blog posts scheduled to come out while I’m gone so you can carry on without me. 😎

I am going to be delivering two sessions at the 2009 GBN conference this fall. I have one scheduled on Monday and the other is on Wednesday. My first session will be about report variables, and will most likely use the 3.x line of Webi for the demonstration platform. I’ve posted about the history of the “Variables” series of presentations before. 🙂 Since I haven’t done one of those for a while, the title that was submitted was “Return of the Variables.”

Session Code: 902
Title: Return of the Variables
Session Date: Oct 19 2009
Session Time: 1:30PM – 2:30PM
Room: Fleur De Lis A&B

The past few years I have done a few presentations on universe design and I have another one this year too. I just finished a project where we had to deal with recursive (hierarchical) data, and we used quite a few interesting techniques to solve those challenges. I’m going to show various ways to model recursive data and the implications each design has on reports. The subject is a bit more specific than I usually like to use for a conference presentation, but it comes up enough that I decided to submit it anyway. I hope the folks that attend will find it useful.

Session Code: 1012
Title: Universe Models for Recursive Data
Session Date: Oct 21 2009
Session Time: 10:45AM – 11:45AM
Room: Grand Ballroom D

The conference is back in Dallas again this year, which means I don’t get to travel somewhere fun. More information on the conference (including a full schedule) can be found on the conference web site.

Related Links

• GBN Annual Conference

I have been selected to present two topics at the 2009 GBN conference (which is back in Dallas again this year). For one of them I will revive the “variables” series and present a new set of fun things to do with Webi variables. 🙂 For the second I will revisit and expand upon a single topic from one of my older Universe Designer presentations: working with recursive data. The entire talk will revolve around the challenges and various solutions that can be used to represent recursive data via a universe. It’s a bit specialized, but I hope folks will find it useful.

If you haven’t made plans for the conference yet, I hope you will consider it. If your manager won’t approve a convention as a budget expense this year, consider it a training opportunity instead. 🙂

The deadline for submitting an abstract for the 2009 GBN conference has recently been extended. The deadline was supposed to be today but is now April 24. That’s good news for me, as I have not been able to get my thoughts together yet about what to submit.

If you have never submitted an abstract before, the process is quite painless. All you have to do is come up with an idea and summarize it in several hundred words. That’s it. 🙂 Once you have that there is a simple web form to fill out and your submission goes into the process. This year for the first time the user community will be involved in the selection process (part of the value of being a member of GBN) and I thoroughly support that concept. In the past Business Objects would manage the selection process with little or no direct input from users.

One of two things will happen. Either you get selected at which point you have to create the presentation and deliver it to an audience of your peers and you get a free pass to the conference. Or you don’t get selected and don’t have to do the extra work. 😉