Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

So far I’ve been to the general session and one track session. I was wondering how the logistics were going to work with SAPPHIRE and the number of people here… it worked out fairly well. Once the main room filled out they sent overflow people to the “theaters” which are located throughout the conference facility. It was a good presentation; they showed some nice integration between SAP and various Business Objects (or other) products, and according to the presenters these are technologies that are available right here, right now. Meaning they’re not future integrations, they’re already here.

There was also plenty of new stuff (or so it seemed) for the SAP folks in the same presentation.

I also managed to track down one of the folks that has been responsible for the Insight conferences in the past and tried to confirm the information going around (or lack of information 😆 ) regarding the fall Insight conference. At this point he could not formally confirm anything, so I guess we’re still in the dark at least for a while. I know that there have been some announcements regarding a fall conference in Dallas, and we did talk about that. Essentially I got the “can neither confirm nor deny those allegations” sort of remarks. 🙂

The conference overall is huge, of course. But it’s relatively easy to find the Business Objects wing and hang out there. I’ll try to post more details about the track sessions and other information as I have time (and laptop battery) to do so.

One of the advantages of living in a big airline hub city like Dallas is that flight connections are generally good. Things start to fall apart for international flights… especially for some destinations. Berlin is one of those places, it seems. Continue reading “SAPPHIRE 2008 – Getting There is NOT Half the Fun…”

I made it a personal goal when I started this blog to have at least two posts a month. Here it is, May 15th, and there are no posts yet. 😳 The main reason is that I am trying to get projects wrapped up or at least to a point where I can be gone for a week, since the SAPPHIRE conference in Berlin starts next week.

I have lots of things started. 🙂 Maybe I’ll get some finished on the plane. 😎

The other day I was talking to someone about contexts in a universe and they offered the typical response. You probably know the one… it says that you should set up one context per fact table. If you read many posts on BOB then you’ll see that phrase quoted quite a bit. The question is: Is this the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

No, it is not.

Continue reading “Is “One Context Per Fact Table” a True Statement?”

I have had a photography site online for many years. It was one of the first sites I built, and lately is the last site to get any loving attention. 🙂 I fixed a little bit of that a few weeks ago when I launched my new photography blog, and plugged it into that site.

So if you’re interesting in things outside of the IT world, I would love to have you stop by, read a post or two, and maybe even leave a comment. 😎

Moments of Light Photography Blog

It seems that my installation of WordPress on this blog was hacked. Yes, I was out of date. Yes, I have fixed it. Yes, I have checked my server and everything seems fine. Yes, I’m pissed that people don’t seem to have anything better to do. 🙄

In any case, one of the symptoms was that all of my “pages” were changed to posts and then hidden for some reason. So if you were missing the conference download links, they’re back now.

I had two possible titles in mind for this blog post. The other one was “It’s Alive!” but I decided to go the Grateful Dead route instead. First, because I’m grateful it’s over. Second, because I almost feel dead after working until 2:30 AM or later last weekend. What am I talking about?

I’m talking about BOB Version III.

Continue reading “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been”

I have a “recent comments” plug-in installed here. It shows the five most recent comments in the sidebar. What I really want is a link that will display recent comments in the main body of the page. If anyone has a link (I have looked all over, and found only code for comments in the sidebar) please let me know. Thanks.

I got the acceptance notice a few days ago. I will be condensing my two-part “ninja” presentation into one part and presenting it at the combined SAPPHIRE / Business Objects conference in Berlin in May. At some point I will (eventually) get around to completing the write-up of the various sections here on my blog.

Hopefully before the next Insight Americas conference. 😆

A few days ago I finally got started on what will become a series of posts about fan and chasm traps. The post was “Do I Have a Fan Trap?” and it included a definition of a fan trap in a universe and showed a basic solution. However, it also mentioned that the basic solution would not work in most cases, and that contexts would be required for a more complete solution. If you are new to the Universe Designer, or even if you just have not worked with contexts that much, the first step is understanding exactly what a context does for you. That is what I hope to do with this post.

Continue reading “What Is a Context Anyway?”