Cubes (including Cognos PowerCubes and Dynamic Cubes, as well as other file-based cube technologies) are well-known, commonly used, and valuable data sources in reporting. As specially indexed binary files, report performance with cubes is generally robust, however when cube files grow very large (or there is high simultaneous demand reading from the cube), response time can and will decrease. That’s why it can sometimes be useful to show cube sizes on BI reports to let authors know when a cube’s size could be affecting performance. Read more
Tag Archive for: Business Intelligence
Metadata packages usually connect or point to particular data sources, but what if for testing, business, or application reasons you need a package to dynamically reference a different data source based on the executing user, user job function, or user location? Read more
Ironside hosted a webinar on IT-Driven vs. User-Driven Analytics: How to Coexist. Rob Minogue, Director of Advisory Services and Scott Misage, Business Analytics Practice Lead, presented on how to bridge the gap between IT-Driven analytics and User-Driven analytics and innovative approaches to monitoring and governance.
Let’s go back a few years. You and your company invested significant amounts of time, effort, and capital to implement a business intelligence environment meant to serve the analytic needs of your organization and help drive insights. You and your team spent extra effort in developing the metadata and reporting that the business said they required, yet you’ve been hearing about users downloading free tools for analysis, your development request backlog has dried up, and a quick look at your audit logs shows flat, or worse, declining usage of your environment. What’s going on? Read more
What Is Metadata?
Metadata is a broad term referring to information about data. Its purpose is to provide us with an easily understandable context for the information we use. It answers questions we’re likely to ask about any source of data, such as where it comes from, how it’s generated, and when it was created. In data analytics, metadata comes in three main types: Read more
When’s the last time you were talking data and analytics and someone stopped the conversation to ask what a term meant? If you’re wracking your brain now, you’re not alone. It’s a rare situation to run into.
Analytics professionals like being on top of things, which means sometimes when we hear something new in a conversation we just nod and make a mental note to look it up later. And then work gets busy and before we know it we’re resolving to just do our best to pick up said buzzword through context clues in other conversations. Read more
Ironside’s Crystal Meyers was featured in Vol. 19, No. 4 of TDWI’s Business Intelligence Journal. Her points are particularly relevant as business analytics begins a more pronounced shift toward a bimodal model in 2016.
Reprinted with permission of 1105 Media, Inc. As published in TDWI’s Business Intelligence Journal. Read more
Data discovery tools and techniques represent the largest change to traditional business intelligence in the last decade. Instead of being a replacement for enterprise reporting, however, data discovery is a new approach that augments the old methods. Understanding when to use each and how they work together are key elements in implementing a strategy for bimodal analytics. Read more
Data is scary. It comes in many types and requires even more tools to manage, which can make finding the information you’re looking for an intimidating prospect. Luckily, dashboards can help you get relevant data in a format that works for the people who need it most. This article will explore the core concepts behind good dashboard design and put you on the road to making sense of all that data out there. Read more
One thing all conferences have in common is that they’re overwhelming. There’s more to learn, see, and do than any one person can handle. Narrowing all those options down to what matters most for your role is tricky at best and frustrating at worst, especially when it comes to a multidisciplinary, multi-technology event like the Gartner BI & Analytics Summit. Some of our top experts and clients will be giving presentations at the Grapevine, TX Gartner Summit this March. This got us thinking: how can we use our experience to help other attendees get the most out of the event? Read more