links for 2008-06-28
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Where do new BI tools fit into the marketplace?
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The emergence of the XML for Analysis standard (XML/A) - merging OLAP with relational reporting?
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This post describes the love - hate relationship people have with Excel.
Using SQL Server Express as the Cognos 8 Content Store
Microsoft SQL Server is fully supported by Cognos 8 Business Intelligence Server, but the Express Edition is not officially supported for use as the Cognos 8 content store, as per the support website. If you try anyway with a default install of SQL Server Express, you will see an error like the following in the cogserver.log file when the Cognos service is started:
192.168.0.103:9300 5496 2008-06-19 15:16:24.390 -5 Initialization_SESS Initialization_REQ Thread-16 CM 888 1 Audit.cms.CM StartService Warning CM-CFG-5063 A Content Manager configuration error was detected while connecting to the content store. CM-SYS-5003 Content Manager is unable to access the content store. Verify your database connection parameters, and then contact your database administrator for assistance. Failed Logon:com.jnetdirect.jsql.JSQLException: TCP/IP connection failed to host:localhost java.net.Con nectException: Connection refused: connect url:jdbc:JSQLConnect://localhost:1433/cognos83
This is a generic error that states that the Cognos 8 application cannot connect to the content store database. However, with a few configuration tweaks, this can be resolved. By default, the SQL Server Express networking protocols are disabled, which means that it will not accept TCP/IP connections. This is why Cognos cannot make the connection and throws the error. To resolve the problem, we need to do two things with SQL Server Express: first, enable TCP/IP, and then second, specify a port number to listen on. Here are the steps:
- Launch the SQL Server Configuration Manager.
- In the left hand window tree view, expand SQL Server 2005 Network Configuration.
- Select “Protocols for SQLEXPRESS”.
- In the right hand window, right click on “TCP/IP” in the list of protocols and choose “Enable”.
- Right click on TCP/IP again and select properties.
- Click on the tab labelled “IP Addresses”
- Scroll down to the bottom to view the section titled “IPALL”
- Clear the value for “TCP Dynamic Ports” so that it is blank.
- Enter TcpPort number to use when making remote connections, for example, “1433″.
Restart the SQL Server service. Now, when you start Cognos 8, the connection will be made and the content store tables will be created in the database. You can verify this by watching for xml files being created in the logs directory (with names like 001.CMCreateWSRPObjects_results.xml), or by refreshing the tables folder in the SQL Server. I saw 116 tables created, but I know that can vary, according to the version of Cognos 8.
Caveat emptor: Keep in mind that SQL Server Express is not supported by IBM Cognos for use as the content store database.
Thanks to the SQL Server Express Weblog for the pointers that helped me get this working.
How to Get Started with Operational Business Intelligence
Getting started is often the hardest part of any project because it involves dealing with so many unknown factors. Operational BI can be especially daunting, as it can have such an impact on non-technical people and processes. Claudia Imhoff, on the b-eye network blog, offers some thoughts on getting started with operational BI:
1. Start small - Making changes, especially changes that impact people and their business processes, can be tough. By starting small and building on subsequent successes, everyone gains confidence in the new system, paving the way for bigger changes down the road.
2. Asses the existing DW/BI infrastructure - As BI moves into an operational role, existing problems will only get worse, and they gain a wider, less forgiving, audience. Make a plan to reduce bottlenecks and solve any delivery, infrastructure and data quality issues.
As BI projects go, introducing BI software into an operational role is particularly challenging. However, the payoffs can be huge for both the organization and the IT department. The organization wins with gains in productivity and efficiency in achieving business goals, while the IT department wins increased respect as a strategic part of the organization.
Custom Windows Control Panel
The Windows control panel contains a lot of stuff and it seems to take forever to open. My solution to this has either to make a bunch of shortcuts on the desktop, or to just suck it up if it is a machine that I work on only occasionally. I came across this hack for creating a custom control panel via the Lifehacker blog. This is a much better solution.
Business Intelligence gets Cloudy
Cloud computing is a great IT buzzword for this year, and sure enough, there are some BI vendors hitching themselves to this bandwagon. However, beyond the hype, there are some real benefits to hosting BI applications outside the organization’s own data center and “in the cloud”, as explained in this InfoWorld article:
- The client interface is web based - End users are already familiar with the web browser, and increasingly, they are at ease with using web applications.
- The IT department’s role is simplified - There is no additional server infrastructure to maintain, and there are no desktop applications to roll out, troubleshoot and keep updated.
While there are other issues to address, I think the weight of these two arguments, which both reduce the overall cost of BI implementations, will continue to drive more BI software into a cloud computing model.
Are Analytics the future of BI?
While analytics have been around for a long time, most BI implementations focus on building the data warehouse and delivering the data in a nice format. For analysis, OLAP cubes are created, but often, the serious analysis work is done by exporting the data to Excel. The major BI vendors have tried to branch out into analytics, offering packages, usually for an ERP system, built with their own BI tools. The exception is SAS, which has focused on analytics, and pretty much owns the higher end of the market.
However, there are some upstart BI vendors attacking the weak analytics offerings in the existing BI solutions. NextAnalytics is one such company, founded by Ward Yaternick, a former Cognos employee.
In a recent blog post, he sums up the problem his software solves: “analytics are iterative and sequential.” This makes analytics very expensive to do and to maintain with the current BI tools. NextAnalytics also has a non-traditional licensing and pricing model, similar to other commercial open source products, which will be a breath of fresh air for those used to negotiating with the big BI software vendors.
Three Reasons to Use Virtual Servers
The most exciting IT trend of the past year or so is virtualization. It is having a huge impact in the data center, and soon we will start to see the downstream effects on business applications and the end users. I came across this take on virtualization, from the perspective of the IT Director for a web 2.0 startup. Here are his reasons for going virtual:
- Server resources (CPU, memory, disk space) can be reallocated on the fly.
- Virtual servers are not bound to specific hardware resources, meaning that they can be moved easily.
- The CPU and memory use can be maximized on each server. Less physical servers, less electricity and less rack space are used to do more work.
It all adds up saving money.
7 Steps for Troubleshooting BI Software
Earlier today I published the final version of this white paper: 7 Steps for Troubleshooting BI Software. Have a look, and if you find it helpful, please say thanks by sending me a note or by leaving a comment.