Hi,
Qlikview is the emerging name in the Business Intelligence world and becoming very popular among the user community due to its easy to use interface, fast deployment and very strong visualisation.
Qliktech released its version 9 recently with a new Edition called Qlikview 9Personal Edition having all the developer features.
Earlier Qlikview use to provide only 15 days of evaluation period for people who want to give it a try which is really a very small duration to try or evaluate a Business Intelligence Tool.
This limits the user to use it beyond that period.
Now with version 9, Qliktech allows to download the personal edition from their website for free and use the product for personal use for an unlimited period of time and does not require any key.
So, that in real sense a very good news for the student community as well as for startup businesses or small growing businesses to use Qlikview for their personal use.
As small business generally has lot of data in flat files or excel files, Qlikview becomes a very handy Business Intelligence Software as Qlikview is very easy and effective when you have lot of excel files or combination of flat files, desktop database and relational databases.
Now you can develop or get developed Business Intelligence applications and do your analysis to know more about your business. You can export the reports/charts to excel,pdf,gif or png images and email it to your business partners or other members of your Business.
You can also copy/send the complete Qlikview document to another machine where Qlikview free personal edition is installed.
And in future as your business grow and you have the right budget, you can get your personal edition converted to a licenced version without affecting your Qlikview Business Intelligence Application that you had created.
But there are some limitations of Qliview personal edition. As your Qlikview is not a licensed one, you cannot ask for any support from Qliktech which I think is not a big issue. You can manage your application without any support which generally is required for big deployments.
Another limitation is that you cannot use an application developed in Licensed version in your personal edition however an application developed in personal edition can be used with a licenced version.
The application developed in a licenced version when opened in personal edition does not load the data hence a reload of the Qlikview application with the fresh data is required which effectively means that the person having the personal edition should have all the data(flat files or excel files) or access to relational databases to reload the application.
Another limitation is that you cannot publish your dashboards over the web to share it with other users as the personal edition does not provide the web component which allows the users to access the application over the web using Internet browsers.
However, you can use utilities like desktop sharing, remote login or web conferences to allow someone to use that application but in that case you will have to expose your complete application. The person accessing the application through remote login can delete the application or make any modifications.
These limitations may not be relevant to most of the Students or Business Owners to use Qlikview personal edition for learning Qlikview or Using for your analysis.
Replacing scattered excel files with one single source of information will be a great benefit in terms of managebility, reusability and productivity which will save lot of your time and efforts.
Top class visualisation in reports and dashboards and ease of perfoming analytic operations like drill down, Top N analysis, Pivoting,identifying problems etc will be an added advantage.
From Qliktech's perspective, they have made a very strategic move and will give them benefits in the coming years and will also help them in growing their prospects base and users base. This will definately make Qliktech's reputation much better in the market and help in developing Brand.
Qliktech's major install base or user base is small business or large business with small deployments and this move will make its presence more stronger in this area. Also, the buyers risk on investment will be greatly reduced.
Not many companies provide free unlimited period evaluation versions of their Busniess Intelligence softwares. I know only one name i.e Oracle. Even SAP Business Objects and IBM Cognos does not provide more than 30 days evaluation.
I am hopeful that Qliktech very soon will appear in Gartner's Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant and will give a direct competition to the bigger vendors.
Manohar Rana
Friday, July 24, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Pentaho - Open Source BI
Hi,
From past few days I was really very anxious to try my hands on Pentaho.
I heard a lot about the open source Business Intelligence Tools and two names that comes to my mind are Pentaho and Jaspersoft.
So I simply logged on to the Pentaho Website and looked for some demos. Then I looked at the hosted environment. The website is bit confusing and a new visitor like me found it really difficult to search for things may be because there are lot of things there.
Anyway, the good thing I found is this 'Try our Hosted Demo' which not many websites has.
The first screen after logging in looked pretty simple.
This is good. End users generally gets confused if you have so many buttons and they start loosing insterest from the first step itself. If the interface is simple, it gives them some sort of relief and confidence. The same is true with me.
Upper Left side pane shows the folder available and below it will show the files available in that.
The three icons in the middle of the center window provides you options to choose to create a simple tabular report(or a print quality report) or to create some charts. The third button is unclear.
Let's try on the first option first.
OK. This is a wizard. End users love wizards. If you can do something by simply clicking on Next button using defaults, nothing like that. so far so good.
Here I am not considering how the datasets are selected or from where the data is coming simply because the hosted demo environment does'nt have anything like that. So that's a seperate story and I will try to uncover that as well.
So selecting a Business Model, I think will be selecting a cube created for the purpose. That means we are doing OLAP. Now its not clear as of now what technology Pentaho uses, I mean ROLAP or MOLAP. That's a question as of now.
Let's move on and see what's there in Next.
that's a standard wizard. Available items and selected items. There is a distinct selection check box. I think here we do not have option to select which items we need to have distinct values. Checking this option will give distinct values for all items. Little confused here. No worry. let's move ahead.
Here we have an option to categorise the items under levels and put filters as well. Though I did not checked these options, I expect them to be standard.
Formatting options. Good. Users can do such things in the wizard itself. We have a huge list of paper options as well which can help in getting better print quality. You can preview the report in various standard formats. HTML, Pdf, Excel etc. Now the Next button has got disabled, that means we are all set to go and see some action now. Let's click on GO.
Here is my report. Not looking that bad. If I can get a report like this just by clicking on Next button, I am fine with that. But now I know I can make it much better. Interesting so far.
Lets move ahead and create an analysis report.
Simply click on the button having a chart icon on the top bar.
A small window appeared. choose the schema and the cube. I think this schema is similar to Essbase application which has multiple cubes inside it. The application generally is based on the functional aspect of an organisation like sales, finance and inventory etc..
For this demo we just have one schema and a cube inside it. Let's click on OK.
Now wait for a minute and take a look a it. Some buttons appeared on the top. In a way this is good to present the necessary buttons only. I mean when we were creating the static report, these buttons were not there and that saved a lot of confusion probably. Adding things could be easy but to make things clean and simple is really difficult. Let's appreciate this.
Let's click on all regions(+).
I generally like this kind of pivoting using +_ signs. Not every tool have this. I did not see this in Oracle OBIEE ans while talking to customers, I have observed that this is the most preferred way of having a pivot report. Also, one more thing I liked here is the ability to expand the departments for a particular region.
Now let's see what does these buttons means. The first button looking like a cube is OLAP Navigator. From this what I understand is you an add or modify the cube members. Click on it.
The icons are self explanatory but I did not understood there use until I tried them. So here you can change them to appear in rows and columns. By default, dimensions are under rows and measures under columns which is pretty logical. You can rearrange the order of their appearance and also apply filters. So I created a filter to have only one region.
Here is some difference. Here you can check or uncheck the members. But I did not see anything to select multiple members. I need to tick them individually to select. Here if we had that available and selected sections, it would have been much better. Because in actual scenarios, you have a huge list of members in your dimensions and in those cases it would be practically difficult to tick each member manually.
Also, I wanted to remove or hide Positions dimension from my report and failed to find any option to do that. Quite possible that I am not able to find it but if it not there, Pentao will earn one more negetive point.
Ok let's move ahead and look at the next option. The button says MDX. let's look at it.
It seems the database is Multidimentional but which one is not clear. Quite possible that Pentaho can connect to multidimensional sources directly. In that case, this would be very useful tool.
Other few options are very general like sorting and changing the layout, swapping rows and columns.
I am very eager to see some charts now. let's click on the chart button. I hope this would be some wizard based.
I clicked on it. no wizard but nothing less than that. A chart got created automatically. That's OK.
I actually wanted to see the options. There is another button besides the chart button. That is to edit the properties.
Options looking pretty OK. But I did not see anything in case I want to have the numbers or figures appearing on the bars or atleast on the chart against legends. Almost all standard chart types are available.
Two uncommon charts which I found are Pie charts by column and by rows. Not all the tools does have these charts. At the same time I did not see other advance charts like scatter charts. I am not sure if it has gauge charts and sliders. Quite possible that this may be available in some other version or component. One thing wrth mentioning is drill through capability. In properties only there is an option Enable drill through. I checked it. Lets see how does it work.
Here I selected pie charts by columns just to see how does it look. Charts are fine. Enabling drill through activated the hyperlink on the charts. clicking on the chart will create the drill through report.
This is fantastic. Generally creating drill through reports are not so easy. But this is something really easy and user friendly.
Now lets take a look at some sample dashboard.
Here on Dashboards, I see the values are displayed. But I am not sure whether these are text boxes created for the purposes or available in properties. The charts were also not interactive. I mean when I clicked on the region, though the sales trend chart below changed but didnt show any option to drill down. My guess is the first chart(Territory) is static with values pasted pasted on it. In that case the dashoard needs to be made more functional and interactive.
Another dashboard which attracted my attention is this one.
I dont know how this has been made or how difficult it is to create something like this but it's looking pretty interactive. On the map, if you click on any region, the values will pop up like this.
Overall, the tool is user friendly, easy to use, easy to understand, easy to manage and having good reporting, ad-hoc query, dashboard and OLAP analysis capabilities.
Though I did not checked its scheduling, notification and advance functionalities like row level security which may be out of the scope of this onlie demo. But I will try to gather all these information and probably will try to download the tool and loo at it from the scratch.
Any inputs from experts are welcome. Please spare me if you find anything incorrect and let me know.
From past few days I was really very anxious to try my hands on Pentaho.
I heard a lot about the open source Business Intelligence Tools and two names that comes to my mind are Pentaho and Jaspersoft.
So I simply logged on to the Pentaho Website and looked for some demos. Then I looked at the hosted environment. The website is bit confusing and a new visitor like me found it really difficult to search for things may be because there are lot of things there.
Anyway, the good thing I found is this 'Try our Hosted Demo' which not many websites has.
The first screen after logging in looked pretty simple.
This is good. End users generally gets confused if you have so many buttons and they start loosing insterest from the first step itself. If the interface is simple, it gives them some sort of relief and confidence. The same is true with me.
Upper Left side pane shows the folder available and below it will show the files available in that.
The three icons in the middle of the center window provides you options to choose to create a simple tabular report(or a print quality report) or to create some charts. The third button is unclear.
Let's try on the first option first.
OK. This is a wizard. End users love wizards. If you can do something by simply clicking on Next button using defaults, nothing like that. so far so good.
Here I am not considering how the datasets are selected or from where the data is coming simply because the hosted demo environment does'nt have anything like that. So that's a seperate story and I will try to uncover that as well.
So selecting a Business Model, I think will be selecting a cube created for the purpose. That means we are doing OLAP. Now its not clear as of now what technology Pentaho uses, I mean ROLAP or MOLAP. That's a question as of now.
Let's move on and see what's there in Next.
that's a standard wizard. Available items and selected items. There is a distinct selection check box. I think here we do not have option to select which items we need to have distinct values. Checking this option will give distinct values for all items. Little confused here. No worry. let's move ahead.
Here we have an option to categorise the items under levels and put filters as well. Though I did not checked these options, I expect them to be standard.
Formatting options. Good. Users can do such things in the wizard itself. We have a huge list of paper options as well which can help in getting better print quality. You can preview the report in various standard formats. HTML, Pdf, Excel etc. Now the Next button has got disabled, that means we are all set to go and see some action now. Let's click on GO.
Here is my report. Not looking that bad. If I can get a report like this just by clicking on Next button, I am fine with that. But now I know I can make it much better. Interesting so far.
Lets move ahead and create an analysis report.
Simply click on the button having a chart icon on the top bar.
A small window appeared. choose the schema and the cube. I think this schema is similar to Essbase application which has multiple cubes inside it. The application generally is based on the functional aspect of an organisation like sales, finance and inventory etc..
For this demo we just have one schema and a cube inside it. Let's click on OK.
Now wait for a minute and take a look a it. Some buttons appeared on the top. In a way this is good to present the necessary buttons only. I mean when we were creating the static report, these buttons were not there and that saved a lot of confusion probably. Adding things could be easy but to make things clean and simple is really difficult. Let's appreciate this.
Let's click on all regions(+).
I generally like this kind of pivoting using +_ signs. Not every tool have this. I did not see this in Oracle OBIEE ans while talking to customers, I have observed that this is the most preferred way of having a pivot report. Also, one more thing I liked here is the ability to expand the departments for a particular region.
Now let's see what does these buttons means. The first button looking like a cube is OLAP Navigator. From this what I understand is you an add or modify the cube members. Click on it.
The icons are self explanatory but I did not understood there use until I tried them. So here you can change them to appear in rows and columns. By default, dimensions are under rows and measures under columns which is pretty logical. You can rearrange the order of their appearance and also apply filters. So I created a filter to have only one region.
Here is some difference. Here you can check or uncheck the members. But I did not see anything to select multiple members. I need to tick them individually to select. Here if we had that available and selected sections, it would have been much better. Because in actual scenarios, you have a huge list of members in your dimensions and in those cases it would be practically difficult to tick each member manually.
Also, I wanted to remove or hide Positions dimension from my report and failed to find any option to do that. Quite possible that I am not able to find it but if it not there, Pentao will earn one more negetive point.
Ok let's move ahead and look at the next option. The button says MDX. let's look at it.
It seems the database is Multidimentional but which one is not clear. Quite possible that Pentaho can connect to multidimensional sources directly. In that case, this would be very useful tool.
Other few options are very general like sorting and changing the layout, swapping rows and columns.
I am very eager to see some charts now. let's click on the chart button. I hope this would be some wizard based.
I clicked on it. no wizard but nothing less than that. A chart got created automatically. That's OK.
I actually wanted to see the options. There is another button besides the chart button. That is to edit the properties.
Options looking pretty OK. But I did not see anything in case I want to have the numbers or figures appearing on the bars or atleast on the chart against legends. Almost all standard chart types are available.
Two uncommon charts which I found are Pie charts by column and by rows. Not all the tools does have these charts. At the same time I did not see other advance charts like scatter charts. I am not sure if it has gauge charts and sliders. Quite possible that this may be available in some other version or component. One thing wrth mentioning is drill through capability. In properties only there is an option Enable drill through. I checked it. Lets see how does it work.
Here I selected pie charts by columns just to see how does it look. Charts are fine. Enabling drill through activated the hyperlink on the charts. clicking on the chart will create the drill through report.
This is fantastic. Generally creating drill through reports are not so easy. But this is something really easy and user friendly.
Now lets take a look at some sample dashboard.
Here on Dashboards, I see the values are displayed. But I am not sure whether these are text boxes created for the purposes or available in properties. The charts were also not interactive. I mean when I clicked on the region, though the sales trend chart below changed but didnt show any option to drill down. My guess is the first chart(Territory) is static with values pasted pasted on it. In that case the dashoard needs to be made more functional and interactive.
Another dashboard which attracted my attention is this one.
I dont know how this has been made or how difficult it is to create something like this but it's looking pretty interactive. On the map, if you click on any region, the values will pop up like this.
Overall, the tool is user friendly, easy to use, easy to understand, easy to manage and having good reporting, ad-hoc query, dashboard and OLAP analysis capabilities.
Though I did not checked its scheduling, notification and advance functionalities like row level security which may be out of the scope of this onlie demo. But I will try to gather all these information and probably will try to download the tool and loo at it from the scratch.
Any inputs from experts are welcome. Please spare me if you find anything incorrect and let me know.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Gartner BI Magic Quadrant 2009
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....
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....
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
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Hyperion customer move to OBIEE
Hi,
I got this question from someone and I am really not getting any strong arguments for this.
The question is -
How would you convince a Hyperion customer so that he would get ready to move to OBIEE. What would be your key points?
Any suggestions?
I got this question from someone and I am really not getting any strong arguments for this.
The question is -
How would you convince a Hyperion customer so that he would get ready to move to OBIEE. What would be your key points?
Any suggestions?
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Disadvantages
Hi,
You may want to read my earlier post Qlikview Vs Others
You may also be interested in similar posts.
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Enhancements-Charts
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Enhancements- Live Charts
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Tutorial
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Disadvantages
There are some points which I found Interactive reporting lacks as compared to Qlikview.
This would help users who are evaluating IR and Qlikview.
1. To create a selection box (or LOV) and link it to report objects in the dashboard, we need to write some script and cannot be done with drag and drop features. You can do this using Dashboard studio using wizards but the way you do it in Qlikview is just amaging and even users without having any knowledge of the tool can do it in few seconds. Though in version 11, Oracle has introduced some charts and slider which can be interlinked to see the data changing but needs lots of improvements. Hyperion Web Analysis has this feature present.
2. The way we can do what-if analysis in qlikview with the help of slider and variables is really quick and effective. Nothing of that sort can be done in Interactive Reporting. But the concept is IR is not made for that purpose. The way to do this is Essbase to which we cannot just compare Qlikview.
3. To create pivot reports with member showing(+) sign to further drill down and (-) sign representing the last member is not possible in IR. Qlikview can do this very well.
Manohar Rana
You may want to read my earlier post Qlikview Vs Others
You may also be interested in similar posts.
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Enhancements-Charts
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Enhancements- Live Charts
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Tutorial
Hyperion Interactive Reporting Disadvantages
There are some points which I found Interactive reporting lacks as compared to Qlikview.
This would help users who are evaluating IR and Qlikview.
1. To create a selection box (or LOV) and link it to report objects in the dashboard, we need to write some script and cannot be done with drag and drop features. You can do this using Dashboard studio using wizards but the way you do it in Qlikview is just amaging and even users without having any knowledge of the tool can do it in few seconds. Though in version 11, Oracle has introduced some charts and slider which can be interlinked to see the data changing but needs lots of improvements. Hyperion Web Analysis has this feature present.
2. The way we can do what-if analysis in qlikview with the help of slider and variables is really quick and effective. Nothing of that sort can be done in Interactive Reporting. But the concept is IR is not made for that purpose. The way to do this is Essbase to which we cannot just compare Qlikview.
3. To create pivot reports with member showing(+) sign to further drill down and (-) sign representing the last member is not possible in IR. Qlikview can do this very well.
Manohar Rana
Hyperion Essbase Interview Questions
Hi,
You may also like to read Essbase Interview Questions.
I have got this request from someone to post some FAQ's on Hyperion Essbase. Please do not just rely on these questions only. I recommend you read the Essbase documentation and get some hands on to understand the basics. The questions below shold guide you to narrow down your search for the topics you should focus on.
Que 1: What are the two storage options available in Essbase and what are the differences?
Ans: ASO( Aggregate Storage Option) - Used for 1. If we have large number of dimensions(generally more than 10) 2. Most of the dimensions are sparse 3. We cannot write back in ASO. I heard recently that ASO will also have the writeback capability. I don't remember.
BSO (Block Storage Option)- 1. Dimensions are less and dense(recommended values for no of dim are between 4 and 8) . 2. We can write back hence much suited for planning applications.
Financial applications are generally dense structures and normal analytical cubes are sparse. Here we also need to understand what are these dense and sparse members. When the intersections or cells of two dimensions mostly contains a value it is dense. Say for example we have two dimensions period(Month or quarter) and region and we are calculation the sales amount. Generally maximum regions(countries, cities) will have some sales value for a particular month or quarter. Hence we can say that our period dimensions would be dense. But now instead of period, consider another dimension products. Now there are some products which are sold in only some particular regions hence for them there will be no values in other regions or will have very low percentage of data values hence the structure will become sparse.
Now the question arises what is the use of calling them dense or sparse. What difference does it make. Do some research and try to find the answer.
Que 2: Can we build dimensions directly from data sources without using rule files.
Ans: No.
Que 3: When do we generally use build rules files?
Ans: To automate the process of creating dimensions with thousands of members.
Que 4: What are the three primary build methods for building dimensions?
Ans: 1. Generation references
2. level references
3. Parent-Child references.
Que 5: In what case we can define generation 1 to a feild in generation build method.
Ans: We cannot define that as Generation 1 is not valid.
Que 6: Suppose we have assigned Generation 2 and Generation 4 as of now and think of adding generation 3 later some time. Can we build the dimension.
Ans: No. If gen 2 and gen 4 exists, we must assign gen 3.
Que 7: Can we create more than 2 dimensions using only one build rule file.
Ans: Yes, we can do that but it is recommended to use seperate rule file for each dimension.
Que 8: What is UDA( user defined attributes). How are they different than Aliases.
Ans: UDA represents the class of the members. Aliases are just another names of the members. both are different and has different usage.
Que 9: Can we query a member for its UDA in a calculation script.
Ans: Yes. You can query a member for its UDA in a calculation script.
Que 10: How does UDA's impact database size?
Ans: Absolutely no impact as UDA's do not require additional storage space.
Que 11: What is the difference between UDA's and Attribute dimensions?
Ans : Attribute dimensions provides more flexibility than UDA's. Attribute calculations dimensions which include five members with the default names sum, count, min, max and avg are automatically created for the attribute dimensions and are calculate dynamically.
Que 12: How does Attribute dimensions and UDA's impact batch calculation performance?
Ans: UDA's- No Impact as they do not perform any inherent calculations.
Attribute dim- No Impact as they perform only dynamic calculations.
Que 13: How can we display UDA's in reports? How do they impact report report performance.
Ans: UDA's values are never displayed in the reports and hence do not impact report performance.
Que 14: How does Attribute dim impact report performance?
Ans: They highly impact the report performance as the attributes are calculated dynamically when referenced in the report. For very large number of att dim displayed in the report, the performance could drastically reduce.
Que 15: While loading the data, you have applied both the selection criteria as well as rejection criteria to a same record. What will be the outcome.
Ans: Thw record will be rejected.
Que 16: How is data stored in the Essbase database?
Ans: Essbase is an file based database where the data is stored in PAG files of 2 GB each and grows sequentially.
Que 17: Can we have multiple databases in one single application?
Ans: Yes. But only one database per application is recommended.
Que 18: Can we have one ASO database and one BSO database in one single application. If yes, how and If No, why.
Ans 18. No. Because we define ASO or BSO option while creating the appication and not database. Hence if the application is ASO, the databases it contains will be that type only.
Que 19: What are the file extensions for an outline, rule file and a calc script.
Ans: .OTL, .RUL and .CSC
Que 20: What is the role of provider services.
Ans: To communicate between Essbase and Microsoft office tools.
Que 21: What is an alternative to create metaoutline, rule file and load data.
Answer: Integration services and in version 11, we have Essbase studio.
Que 22: Can we start and stop an application individually. How ca this be used to increase performance.
Ans: Yes. We can manage our server resources by starting only the applications which receive heavy user traffic. When an application is started, all associated atabases are brought to the memory.
Que 23: We have created an application as unicode mode. Can we change it later to non-unicode mode.
Ans: No.
Que 24: How can I migrate an application from my test environment to the production environment. Can I still do this if my test environment is a windows one and my production env is UNIX one. Also can I still do it if my test env and prod env versions are different.
Ans: Hyperion Administrative services console provides a migration utility to do this but onluy the application, database objects are migrated and no data is transferred. the answers to other two questions are Yes.
Que 25: A customer wants to run two instances of an Essbase server on a same machine to have both test env and Development env on the same server. Can he do that?
Ans: Yes. We can have multiple instances of an Essbase server on a single machine and there will be dfferent sets of windows services for all these instances.
Que: 26 suppose I have a dimension A with members B and C and I do not want B and C to roll up to A. how can I do this.
Ans: Using (~) exclude from consolidation operator.
Que 27: What does never consolidate operator(^) do?
Ans: It prevents members from being consolidate across any dimension.
Que 28: Can we have multiple metaoutlines based on one OLAP model in Integration services?
Ans: Yes
Que 29: Can we have an metaoutline based on two different OLAp models.
Ans: No.
Que 30: What is hybrid analysis?
Ans: Lower level members and associated data remains in relational database where as upper level members and associated data resides in Essbase database.
You may also like to read Essbase Interview Questions.
I have got this request from someone to post some FAQ's on Hyperion Essbase. Please do not just rely on these questions only. I recommend you read the Essbase documentation and get some hands on to understand the basics. The questions below shold guide you to narrow down your search for the topics you should focus on.
Que 1: What are the two storage options available in Essbase and what are the differences?
Ans: ASO( Aggregate Storage Option) - Used for 1. If we have large number of dimensions(generally more than 10) 2. Most of the dimensions are sparse 3. We cannot write back in ASO. I heard recently that ASO will also have the writeback capability. I don't remember.
BSO (Block Storage Option)- 1. Dimensions are less and dense(recommended values for no of dim are between 4 and 8) . 2. We can write back hence much suited for planning applications.
Financial applications are generally dense structures and normal analytical cubes are sparse. Here we also need to understand what are these dense and sparse members. When the intersections or cells of two dimensions mostly contains a value it is dense. Say for example we have two dimensions period(Month or quarter) and region and we are calculation the sales amount. Generally maximum regions(countries, cities) will have some sales value for a particular month or quarter. Hence we can say that our period dimensions would be dense. But now instead of period, consider another dimension products. Now there are some products which are sold in only some particular regions hence for them there will be no values in other regions or will have very low percentage of data values hence the structure will become sparse.
Now the question arises what is the use of calling them dense or sparse. What difference does it make. Do some research and try to find the answer.
Que 2: Can we build dimensions directly from data sources without using rule files.
Ans: No.
Que 3: When do we generally use build rules files?
Ans: To automate the process of creating dimensions with thousands of members.
Que 4: What are the three primary build methods for building dimensions?
Ans: 1. Generation references
2. level references
3. Parent-Child references.
Que 5: In what case we can define generation 1 to a feild in generation build method.
Ans: We cannot define that as Generation 1 is not valid.
Que 6: Suppose we have assigned Generation 2 and Generation 4 as of now and think of adding generation 3 later some time. Can we build the dimension.
Ans: No. If gen 2 and gen 4 exists, we must assign gen 3.
Que 7: Can we create more than 2 dimensions using only one build rule file.
Ans: Yes, we can do that but it is recommended to use seperate rule file for each dimension.
Que 8: What is UDA( user defined attributes). How are they different than Aliases.
Ans: UDA represents the class of the members. Aliases are just another names of the members. both are different and has different usage.
Que 9: Can we query a member for its UDA in a calculation script.
Ans: Yes. You can query a member for its UDA in a calculation script.
Que 10: How does UDA's impact database size?
Ans: Absolutely no impact as UDA's do not require additional storage space.
Que 11: What is the difference between UDA's and Attribute dimensions?
Ans : Attribute dimensions provides more flexibility than UDA's. Attribute calculations dimensions which include five members with the default names sum, count, min, max and avg are automatically created for the attribute dimensions and are calculate dynamically.
Que 12: How does Attribute dimensions and UDA's impact batch calculation performance?
Ans: UDA's- No Impact as they do not perform any inherent calculations.
Attribute dim- No Impact as they perform only dynamic calculations.
Que 13: How can we display UDA's in reports? How do they impact report report performance.
Ans: UDA's values are never displayed in the reports and hence do not impact report performance.
Que 14: How does Attribute dim impact report performance?
Ans: They highly impact the report performance as the attributes are calculated dynamically when referenced in the report. For very large number of att dim displayed in the report, the performance could drastically reduce.
Que 15: While loading the data, you have applied both the selection criteria as well as rejection criteria to a same record. What will be the outcome.
Ans: Thw record will be rejected.
Que 16: How is data stored in the Essbase database?
Ans: Essbase is an file based database where the data is stored in PAG files of 2 GB each and grows sequentially.
Que 17: Can we have multiple databases in one single application?
Ans: Yes. But only one database per application is recommended.
Que 18: Can we have one ASO database and one BSO database in one single application. If yes, how and If No, why.
Ans 18. No. Because we define ASO or BSO option while creating the appication and not database. Hence if the application is ASO, the databases it contains will be that type only.
Que 19: What are the file extensions for an outline, rule file and a calc script.
Ans: .OTL, .RUL and .CSC
Que 20: What is the role of provider services.
Ans: To communicate between Essbase and Microsoft office tools.
Que 21: What is an alternative to create metaoutline, rule file and load data.
Answer: Integration services and in version 11, we have Essbase studio.
Que 22: Can we start and stop an application individually. How ca this be used to increase performance.
Ans: Yes. We can manage our server resources by starting only the applications which receive heavy user traffic. When an application is started, all associated atabases are brought to the memory.
Que 23: We have created an application as unicode mode. Can we change it later to non-unicode mode.
Ans: No.
Que 24: How can I migrate an application from my test environment to the production environment. Can I still do this if my test environment is a windows one and my production env is UNIX one. Also can I still do it if my test env and prod env versions are different.
Ans: Hyperion Administrative services console provides a migration utility to do this but onluy the application, database objects are migrated and no data is transferred. the answers to other two questions are Yes.
Que 25: A customer wants to run two instances of an Essbase server on a same machine to have both test env and Development env on the same server. Can he do that?
Ans: Yes. We can have multiple instances of an Essbase server on a single machine and there will be dfferent sets of windows services for all these instances.
Que: 26 suppose I have a dimension A with members B and C and I do not want B and C to roll up to A. how can I do this.
Ans: Using (~) exclude from consolidation operator.
Que 27: What does never consolidate operator(^) do?
Ans: It prevents members from being consolidate across any dimension.
Que 28: Can we have multiple metaoutlines based on one OLAP model in Integration services?
Ans: Yes
Que 29: Can we have an metaoutline based on two different OLAp models.
Ans: No.
Que 30: What is hybrid analysis?
Ans: Lower level members and associated data remains in relational database where as upper level members and associated data resides in Essbase database.
Que 31: Why top-down calculation less efficient than a bottom-up calculation?Being less efficient, why do we use them.
Ans: In the process it calculates more blocks than is necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to perform top-down calculation to get the correct calculation results.
Que 32: On what basis you will decide to invoke a serial or parellel calculation method.
Ans: If we have a single processor, we will use serial calculation but if we have multiple processors we can break the task into threads and make them run on different processors.
Que 33: What is block locking system?
Ans: Analytic services(or Essbase Services) locks the block and all other blocks which contain the childs of that block while calculating this block is block locking system.
Que 34: What are the types of partitioning options available in Essbase?
Ans: 1. Replicated partition. 2. Transparent partition 3. Linked partition.
Que 35: Dynamic calc decreases the retreival time and increases batch database calculation time. How true is the statement?
Ans: The statement should be just opposite. As dynamic calc members are calculated when requested, the retreival time should increase.
Que 36: A customer has a cube with 13 dimensions and the performance was fine. Now they have added two more dimensions in the existing cube and the performance becomes very very slow. Customer said logically nothing wrong with the two new dimensions they have added. What could be the reason for slowdown.
Ans: Even I dont have any clue. I experienced this few days back with a customer. If you can throw some light on this, please post your answer.
If you have more questions with answers, please post them so that all of us can benefit.
Also let me know your views and suggestions.
Manohar Rana
If you have more questions with answers, please post them so that all of us can benefit.
Also let me know your views and suggestions.
Manohar Rana
Hyperion Essbase Migration
Hi,
Check out my recent post where I have shown how we can Migrate Essbase Applications from one server to another using file system.
For past few days, I was getting too many queries for upgradation and migration from lower versions to system 9.
1. Brio version 5 to Interactive reporting system 9- This is the most difficult and time consuming migration. Brio customers having versions lower than 6.5 needs to first migrate to atleast 6.5 and then they can migrate to system 9. The BQY documents containing features not supported may not migrate correctly or fully.
2. Hyperion Essbase customers will not have that many problems. Using migration utility they can migrate an Essbase application from lower version to higher version on different server or on different platform.
Customers who are using version less than 9.2.0.3 will have to first come to this version and then they can upgrade to 9.3.1 or 11.1.
if you have any specific questions relating to migration, please post them.
Check out my recent post where I have shown how we can Migrate Essbase Applications from one server to another using file system.
For past few days, I was getting too many queries for upgradation and migration from lower versions to system 9.
1. Brio version 5 to Interactive reporting system 9- This is the most difficult and time consuming migration. Brio customers having versions lower than 6.5 needs to first migrate to atleast 6.5 and then they can migrate to system 9. The BQY documents containing features not supported may not migrate correctly or fully.
2. Hyperion Essbase customers will not have that many problems. Using migration utility they can migrate an Essbase application from lower version to higher version on different server or on different platform.
Customers who are using version less than 9.2.0.3 will have to first come to this version and then they can upgrade to 9.3.1 or 11.1.
if you have any specific questions relating to migration, please post them.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Business Intelligence Interview Questions
I have got these queries from someone and I would like to share my views. I dont claim my answers to be correct and hence wherever you dont agree, please let me know and share your views.
If you have any questions or comments, please post them.
Question:How you generally Approach to ur Analytics Project?
Answer: Any project should start from defining the scope of the project and the approach
should be not to deviate from the scope.
Then the project should be functionally divided into smaller modules generally done by
project managers alongwith technical and functional leads.
The functional leads then decide on majorly three things:
1. According to the defined scope of the project they start gathering requirements while
interacting with the clients.
2. They had a discussion with the technical leads and try to reach a solution.
3. Technical leads decides what schemas to create and what requirements are going to
fulfill by that schema.
Technical leads discuss all this with the developers and try to close requirements.
Simultaneously testing and deployment is planned in a phased manner.
Question: How we are going to decide which schema we are going to implement in the data warehouse?
Answer: One way is what is mentioned in Question above.
If you ask me to blindly create schemas for the warehouse without knowing any requirements,
I will simply first divide the schemas on the basis of functional areas of an Organisation
which are similar to the modules in an ERP like sales, finance, purchase, inventory,
production, HR etc.
I will broadly describe the expected analysis an organisation would like to do in every
module. I think this way you would be able to complete at least 40-50 % of the
requirements. To move ahead, study the data and business and you can create few more
schemas.
Question: What are the Challenges You Faced while making of Reports?
Answer: Making of an report has never been a difficult task. But problem comes when users
are reluctant to adopt a new system. I have experienced that if you are not able to create
the report in exactly the way they used to see, they will keep asking for the changes. Your
approach should be to first show them what they want to see and then add more information
in the report.
Question: What you will do when your Report is not Fetching Right Data?
Answer: this is the biggest problem in report creation and verification. There could be two
reasons for report not fetching the right data.
1. Mostly clients do not have correct data in their database and on top of that to correct
the results they make some changes at the report level to bring the desired result which
you may not e aware of while creating the reports. Clients try to match the data with their
existing reports and you never get the correct results. you try to discover the things and
at later stage come to know of all these problems and you are held responsible for this
delay. Hence always consult the SPOC(Single Point of Contact) and try to understand the
logic they have used to generate their reports.
2. If the database values are correct, there there could be a problem with the joins and
relations in the schema. You need to discover that analysing and digging deep into the
matter.
There are more questions which I will try to answer later.
The questions are very specific to OBIEE and I dont have much experience in that. Hence you may not agree to my answers, but wherever please post a comment and let me know too.
Question: How analytics Process Your Request When you Create your Requests.
Answer: If the Question means how does Oracle BI Analytics Server processes the user requests, the answer is- Oracle BI server converts the logical SQL submitted by the client into optimised physical SQL which is then sent to the backend database. Also in between it performs various tasks like converting the user operations like user selections to form a logical SQL, checking and verifying credentials, breaking the request into threads(as Oracle BI is a multi threaded server), processes the requests, manages the cached results, again converting the results received from the database into user presentable form etc.
Question: From where u Get the Logical Query of your Request?
Answer: The logical SQL generated by the server can be viewed in BI Answers. If I have not understood the question, Please raise your voice.
Question: Major Challenges You Faced While Creating the RPD??????
Answer: Every now and then there are problems with the database connections but the problem while creating the repository RPD files comes with complex schemas made on OLTP systems consisting of lot of joins and checking the results. Th type of join made need to be checked. By default it is inner join but sometimes the requirement demands other types of joins. There are lot of problems with the date formats also.
Question: What are Global Filter and how thery differ From Column Filter?
Answer: Column filter- simply a filter applied on a column which we can use to restrict our column values while pulling the data or in charts to see the related content.
Global filter- Not sure. I understand this filter will have impact on across the application but I really dont understand where and how it can be user. I heard of global variables but not global filters.
How to make the Delivery Profilers Work?
When we are Use SA System how Does SA Server understand that It needs to use it For Getting
the User Profile information?
Where to Configure the Scheduler?
Answer: I am not sure if Iam correct but we configure the OBIEE schedular in database.
Question: How to hide Certain Columns From a User?
Answer: Application access level security- Do not add the column in the report, Do not add the column in the presentation layer.
Question:How can we Enable Drills in a Given Column Data?
Answer: To enable Drill down for a column, it should be included in the hirarchy in OBIEE. Hyperion IR has a drill anywhere feature where dont have to define and can drill to any available column.
Question: Is Drill Down Possible without the attribute being a Part of a Hierarchical Dimension?
Answer: No
Question: How do u Conditional Format.?
Answer: while creating a chat in BI Answers, you can define the conditions and can apply colour formatting.
Question: What is Guided Navigation?
Answer: I think it is just the arrangement of hyperlinks to guide the user to navigate between the reports to do the analysis.
How is Webcat File Deployed Across Environment?
Question: How the users Created Differs From RPD/Answers/Dashboards Level?????
Answer: RPD users can do administrator tasks like adding new data source, create hirarchies, change column names where as Answers users may create new charts, edit those charts and Dashboard users may only view and analyse the dashboard or can edit dashboard by adding/removing charts objects.
Question: Online/Offline Mode how it Impact in Dev and Delpoyment????
Answer: Online Mode- You can make changes in the RPD file and push in changes which will be immediately visible to the users who are already connected. This feature we may use in production environment.
Offline mode- can be useful in test or development environment.
Questions: Explan me the Schema in Your Last Project???????
DB What happens if u Reconcile/Sync Both????
If you have any questions or comments, please post them.
Question:How you generally Approach to ur Analytics Project?
Answer: Any project should start from defining the scope of the project and the approach
should be not to deviate from the scope.
Then the project should be functionally divided into smaller modules generally done by
project managers alongwith technical and functional leads.
The functional leads then decide on majorly three things:
1. According to the defined scope of the project they start gathering requirements while
interacting with the clients.
2. They had a discussion with the technical leads and try to reach a solution.
3. Technical leads decides what schemas to create and what requirements are going to
fulfill by that schema.
Technical leads discuss all this with the developers and try to close requirements.
Simultaneously testing and deployment is planned in a phased manner.
Question: How we are going to decide which schema we are going to implement in the data warehouse?
Answer: One way is what is mentioned in Question above.
If you ask me to blindly create schemas for the warehouse without knowing any requirements,
I will simply first divide the schemas on the basis of functional areas of an Organisation
which are similar to the modules in an ERP like sales, finance, purchase, inventory,
production, HR etc.
I will broadly describe the expected analysis an organisation would like to do in every
module. I think this way you would be able to complete at least 40-50 % of the
requirements. To move ahead, study the data and business and you can create few more
schemas.
Question: What are the Challenges You Faced while making of Reports?
Answer: Making of an report has never been a difficult task. But problem comes when users
are reluctant to adopt a new system. I have experienced that if you are not able to create
the report in exactly the way they used to see, they will keep asking for the changes. Your
approach should be to first show them what they want to see and then add more information
in the report.
Question: What you will do when your Report is not Fetching Right Data?
Answer: this is the biggest problem in report creation and verification. There could be two
reasons for report not fetching the right data.
1. Mostly clients do not have correct data in their database and on top of that to correct
the results they make some changes at the report level to bring the desired result which
you may not e aware of while creating the reports. Clients try to match the data with their
existing reports and you never get the correct results. you try to discover the things and
at later stage come to know of all these problems and you are held responsible for this
delay. Hence always consult the SPOC(Single Point of Contact) and try to understand the
logic they have used to generate their reports.
2. If the database values are correct, there there could be a problem with the joins and
relations in the schema. You need to discover that analysing and digging deep into the
matter.
There are more questions which I will try to answer later.
The questions are very specific to OBIEE and I dont have much experience in that. Hence you may not agree to my answers, but wherever please post a comment and let me know too.
Question: How analytics Process Your Request When you Create your Requests.
Answer: If the Question means how does Oracle BI Analytics Server processes the user requests, the answer is- Oracle BI server converts the logical SQL submitted by the client into optimised physical SQL which is then sent to the backend database. Also in between it performs various tasks like converting the user operations like user selections to form a logical SQL, checking and verifying credentials, breaking the request into threads(as Oracle BI is a multi threaded server), processes the requests, manages the cached results, again converting the results received from the database into user presentable form etc.
Question: From where u Get the Logical Query of your Request?
Answer: The logical SQL generated by the server can be viewed in BI Answers. If I have not understood the question, Please raise your voice.
Question: Major Challenges You Faced While Creating the RPD??????
Answer: Every now and then there are problems with the database connections but the problem while creating the repository RPD files comes with complex schemas made on OLTP systems consisting of lot of joins and checking the results. Th type of join made need to be checked. By default it is inner join but sometimes the requirement demands other types of joins. There are lot of problems with the date formats also.
Question: What are Global Filter and how thery differ From Column Filter?
Answer: Column filter- simply a filter applied on a column which we can use to restrict our column values while pulling the data or in charts to see the related content.
Global filter- Not sure. I understand this filter will have impact on across the application but I really dont understand where and how it can be user. I heard of global variables but not global filters.
How to make the Delivery Profilers Work?
When we are Use SA System how Does SA Server understand that It needs to use it For Getting
the User Profile information?
Where to Configure the Scheduler?
Answer: I am not sure if Iam correct but we configure the OBIEE schedular in database.
Question: How to hide Certain Columns From a User?
Answer: Application access level security- Do not add the column in the report, Do not add the column in the presentation layer.
Question:How can we Enable Drills in a Given Column Data?
Answer: To enable Drill down for a column, it should be included in the hirarchy in OBIEE. Hyperion IR has a drill anywhere feature where dont have to define and can drill to any available column.
Question: Is Drill Down Possible without the attribute being a Part of a Hierarchical Dimension?
Answer: No
Question: How do u Conditional Format.?
Answer: while creating a chat in BI Answers, you can define the conditions and can apply colour formatting.
Question: What is Guided Navigation?
Answer: I think it is just the arrangement of hyperlinks to guide the user to navigate between the reports to do the analysis.
How is Webcat File Deployed Across Environment?
Question: How the users Created Differs From RPD/Answers/Dashboards Level?????
Answer: RPD users can do administrator tasks like adding new data source, create hirarchies, change column names where as Answers users may create new charts, edit those charts and Dashboard users may only view and analyse the dashboard or can edit dashboard by adding/removing charts objects.
Question: Online/Offline Mode how it Impact in Dev and Delpoyment????
Answer: Online Mode- You can make changes in the RPD file and push in changes which will be immediately visible to the users who are already connected. This feature we may use in production environment.
Offline mode- can be useful in test or development environment.
Questions: Explan me the Schema in Your Last Project???????
DB What happens if u Reconcile/Sync Both????
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