Yesterday just got a chance to look at Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence 2009.
I am really happy to see Qlikview almost touching the Leaders Quadrant Boundary and may be by next year Qlikview will join the leaders club.
So that's a good news for people who have invested in this technology.
This would be really interesting to watch how Qlikview will compete with the leaders. The strong points mentioned by Gartner are OK but I love to look at the weak points because thats the only area where you need to put more efforts and will eventually decide on your success.
1. Lack of statistical and predictive modelling: Thats the key area where Qlikview needs to improve heavily to be able to compete with other leaders. At present, Gartner named some of the competitors as Tibco and some other small products and while doing that it says it is behind them as well. If Qliktech fails to address this quickly before getting into leaders quadrant, it will become very difficult to move forward or maintain its position.
2. The fear of Qliktech being getting acquired will have some impact on the prospects. The prospects will get more cautious and may look for other options which are more certain and safe.
Prospects do not want to suffer from the change in policies, product names, re-architecturing etc and want to play safe wich is fair enough.
3. Gartner feels Qlikview still requires more examples of Large BI deployments and stressed on saying that it has not moved further in this area as compared to last year. I feel this will remain a challenge until Qlikview make some improvements in the architecture to deploy on large environment.
4. The last point may be very dangerous for Qliktech. People who were involved in large deployments understand the importance of Metadata management. making quick reports and good reporting capabilities are good but metadata management is the second pillar on which the deployment stands. If Qliktech fails to address this soon, it will definately be very difficult to get large deployment examples.
You may also want to read Qlikview vs Others which has some discussions on the pros and cons.
This was about Qlikview, the tool which I personally love.
The other interesting things which Gartner mentioned is inclusion of some open source BI tools like Jaspersoft and Pentaho. I hear a lot about Pehtaho and would love to include a review for this in my blog soon but before that I would like to try my hands on that or read some technology information whitepapers.
Now with the inclusion of open source BI, these tools will get some acknowledgement and people will have a choice to look at them as well.
Other open source which I am hearing a lot is Jaspersoft.
Another thing which Gartners mentioned is the SaaS(Software as a Service) BI tools. This may be good for products based on some properitery technology to store the data which has a potential risk of migrating the complete application if customer chooses to shift to a new technology or if the vendor plans to de support or does not provide a way to integrate with other technologies. In that case, customer has absolutely no choice other than to competely rebuild the entire application on different platform which I think will not be an easy and economical task.
I really dont have any idea how SAAS vendors make sure customers investment is not affected if anything of such sort happens. If someone can provide an insight would be helpful.
The new names which I never heard are Pivotlink, Lucid Era and Oco.
to be continued....
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Monday, December 15, 2008
Essbase Interview Questions
Hi,
You may like to read my earlier post Hyperion Essbase Interview Questions.
Today I will be posting few more questions on Hyperion Essbase more from an Administrative perspective.
The questions and answers have been designed by me and are not copied from anywhere.
Que:1 What are LRO's( Linked Reporting Objects)?
Answer: They are specific objects like files, cell notes or URL's associated with specific data cells of Essbase database. You can link multiple objects to a single data cell. These linked objects are stored in the server. These LRO's can be exported or imported with the database for backup and migtarion activities.
Que:2 What are the specified roles other than Aministrator to view sessions, disconnect sessions or kill users requests for a particular application?
Answer: You should have the role of Application manager for the specified application.
Que:3 What are the three options specified in Username and Password management under security tab in Essbase server proprties.
Answer: 1. Login attempts allowed before username is disabled.
2. Number of inactive days before username is diabled.
3. Number of days before user must change password.
Que:4 Why do objects gets locked and when does this happens?
Answer: Objects gets locked to prevent users to make simultaneous and conflicting changes to Essbase database objects. By default whenever an object is accessed through Aministrative services console or Excel spreadsheet add-in, it gets locked.
Que: 5 I have created an application with one database in Essbase at test environment and now needs to copy the entire application with all security permissions to the production server which is not connected to the test server. How can I do that?
Answer: You can acheive this using migration wizard to migrate an application to a text file which you can take physically to the production server.
To know how you can do that, take a look at this post Essbase Application Migration.
Que:6 From the above question, When I migrated the application to the production server I do not see any data in the Essbase database. What has gone wrong and how to correct this?
Answer: Nothing has gone wrong. Migration utility does not migrate the actual data. If you want to copy the exact data from the test machine, get it exported using export utility and import it on production machine.
Que:7 Referring to the above question, Can I still do this if my production server and test server are two different operation systems. Explain.
Answer: While exporting the database, you can write the database data to an ASCII text file which enables you to load data on different platforms.
Que:8 How can we backup an aggregate storage database?
Answer: To back up an aggregate storage database, copy the application directory ARBORPATH/app/appname.
Que:9 How does Essbase recover from a database crash?
Answer: After a database crash or server interruption, Essbase automatically recovers a database after rolling back the transactions that were active at that time.
Que:10 How can you make a Max L script run at a specified time?
Answer: MaxL scripts can be called from a BAT file which is used for scheduling.
More questions will be coming soon...
You may like to read my earlier post Hyperion Essbase Interview Questions.
Today I will be posting few more questions on Hyperion Essbase more from an Administrative perspective.
The questions and answers have been designed by me and are not copied from anywhere.
Que:1 What are LRO's( Linked Reporting Objects)?
Answer: They are specific objects like files, cell notes or URL's associated with specific data cells of Essbase database. You can link multiple objects to a single data cell. These linked objects are stored in the server. These LRO's can be exported or imported with the database for backup and migtarion activities.
Que:2 What are the specified roles other than Aministrator to view sessions, disconnect sessions or kill users requests for a particular application?
Answer: You should have the role of Application manager for the specified application.
Que:3 What are the three options specified in Username and Password management under security tab in Essbase server proprties.
Answer: 1. Login attempts allowed before username is disabled.
2. Number of inactive days before username is diabled.
3. Number of days before user must change password.
Que:4 Why do objects gets locked and when does this happens?
Answer: Objects gets locked to prevent users to make simultaneous and conflicting changes to Essbase database objects. By default whenever an object is accessed through Aministrative services console or Excel spreadsheet add-in, it gets locked.
Que: 5 I have created an application with one database in Essbase at test environment and now needs to copy the entire application with all security permissions to the production server which is not connected to the test server. How can I do that?
Answer: You can acheive this using migration wizard to migrate an application to a text file which you can take physically to the production server.
To know how you can do that, take a look at this post Essbase Application Migration.
Que:6 From the above question, When I migrated the application to the production server I do not see any data in the Essbase database. What has gone wrong and how to correct this?
Answer: Nothing has gone wrong. Migration utility does not migrate the actual data. If you want to copy the exact data from the test machine, get it exported using export utility and import it on production machine.
Que:7 Referring to the above question, Can I still do this if my production server and test server are two different operation systems. Explain.
Answer: While exporting the database, you can write the database data to an ASCII text file which enables you to load data on different platforms.
Que:8 How can we backup an aggregate storage database?
Answer: To back up an aggregate storage database, copy the application directory ARBORPATH/app/appname.
Que:9 How does Essbase recover from a database crash?
Answer: After a database crash or server interruption, Essbase automatically recovers a database after rolling back the transactions that were active at that time.
Que:10 How can you make a Max L script run at a specified time?
Answer: MaxL scripts can be called from a BAT file which is used for scheduling.
More questions will be coming soon...
Monday, November 10, 2008
Implementing Business Intelligence
Checklist for Implementing Business Intelligence-
If you are planning to implement a Business Intelligence solution there are a number of things to check before you decide on a solution.
1. Cost of the project: The cost of a project comprises of
(a) The cost of the product licenses.
(b) New hardware to be purchased for product installations.
(c) Any third party software to be purchased.
(d) Implementation cost including user’s trainings.
(e) Support and Maintenance cost.
It is very important to evaluate these costs before choosing a product. Certain tools may be cheap to buy but implementation and maintenance cost comes out very expensive.
2. Product’s Credibility: The product should be evaluated by considering the following-
(a) High Stability- The product should be matured enough being in the market for atleast 5 years. This is important as chances of bugs in the product are minimal, the product becomes stable. Couple of years back there were not many products in the market and the options were very less but now this is not the case.
(b) Completeness- The product should have a completeness considering all aspects of features. Some products may be very good in some aspects or features and in most of the sales demonstrations/POC’s they display those capabilities only and always try to avoid any discussion on weak points. Please ask questions as many as you can and also verify whether these capabilities/features are available out of the box functionality using wizards and drag and drop features or they just have workarounds using some code. The product should be a balanced mix of all the capabilities.
(c) Level of execution- Check whether the product can be executed for large number of users even if you have small numbers of users and how the product scales, handles high avalability, clustering environment etc.
(d) References- The product as well as the implementation partner should have good number of references where the product has been implemented sucessfully. Also check for the implementation partner's credibility, financial status and implementation capability.
---- more will follow
If you are planning to implement a Business Intelligence solution there are a number of things to check before you decide on a solution.
1. Cost of the project: The cost of a project comprises of
(a) The cost of the product licenses.
(b) New hardware to be purchased for product installations.
(c) Any third party software to be purchased.
(d) Implementation cost including user’s trainings.
(e) Support and Maintenance cost.
It is very important to evaluate these costs before choosing a product. Certain tools may be cheap to buy but implementation and maintenance cost comes out very expensive.
2. Product’s Credibility: The product should be evaluated by considering the following-
(a) High Stability- The product should be matured enough being in the market for atleast 5 years. This is important as chances of bugs in the product are minimal, the product becomes stable. Couple of years back there were not many products in the market and the options were very less but now this is not the case.
(b) Completeness- The product should have a completeness considering all aspects of features. Some products may be very good in some aspects or features and in most of the sales demonstrations/POC’s they display those capabilities only and always try to avoid any discussion on weak points. Please ask questions as many as you can and also verify whether these capabilities/features are available out of the box functionality using wizards and drag and drop features or they just have workarounds using some code. The product should be a balanced mix of all the capabilities.
(c) Level of execution- Check whether the product can be executed for large number of users even if you have small numbers of users and how the product scales, handles high avalability, clustering environment etc.
(d) References- The product as well as the implementation partner should have good number of references where the product has been implemented sucessfully. Also check for the implementation partner's credibility, financial status and implementation capability.
---- more will follow
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