Microstrategy Blog

I’ve been working towards it for a while, but a business partner and I finally buckled down and did it. We’re incorporated, and proper consultants now, which means I have to plug the business in an effort to make my millions (*sigh*).

The short version of the sale is this:

We focus on Business Intelligence for the small business. This means we help them create practical, scalable Business Intelligence application built on proper data-warehouses. The idea is to get them to use the free tools (SQL Express, PERL, PHP, MYSQL, Office Suite, and MicroStrategy Reporting…depending on client wants and needs) to start making use of their data properly early in their business life cycle. It’s never too early to start good habits. We get their data integrated early, while it’s less painful, and less costly, and then help them build into greatness.

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while to keep the brain s harp, and the skills flexible. In the mean time I’m also juggling my enjoyable full time gig, and my MBA education.

Anywho…10 cool points to the person who gets the reference of the company name…WITHOUT GOOGLING you cheaters. Click through for the web site.

I’m done with my current quarter. I’ve mentioned before that I’m working on my MBA at UCI, and I’ve also started my own business in the BI field (finally Incorporated) and of course I have my full time real job, so if my once regular updates have fallen by the wayside…I’m sorry, mortgage paying endeavors take priority.

For good reading though, the Economist is talking about Business Intelligence, without using the word business intelligence of course…we leave that word for Stephen Few, and his acerbic wit. The thing I like about Few is his unwillingness to pay lip service to the big boys, just because they’re big boys…like he does with SAP here…

Meanwhile, I’m putting extra time lately into Tableau Public, though regrettably I won’t be able to make the visualization contest (I think, we’ll see how entertaining this weekend becomes), Spotfire (really digging it, if you have the time get the free download) and MicroStrategy Reporting V2 (can the Graph Matrix Widget compare to Spotfire). Here’s the problem with the MicroStrategy free reporting solution. They really just make that a bitch to update. The issue is that I have 2 installations (shhhhhhh), one on my desktop for pure development and this blog, and one on my laptop for showing off MicroStrategy bells and whistles development to other people. I consider myself a unofficial sales tool for MicroStrategy…regrettably with no financial incentives. So, in your “my account” in the download page at MSTR web page, to upgrade, you have to click your existing registration key, as if you were requesting it, at which point it says “oh yeah, here’s the link in case you want to download.” That’s odd….I figure you give download a little more priority over registration key, or maybe even separate sections in the account page? I know, I’m just being picky.

By the way, 4.0 last quarter in the MBA program. Suck it Statistics and Accounting. Linear Regression analysis is my bitch.

A friend of mine caught this link on LifeHack…Free Tableau Public…Interesting enough to play around with as long as you’re not playing with private data.

Been gearing up for finals oh loyal reader base of 3 people. I’ll get to development…during spring break (this is how I party).

Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61.

I was never a player of the board game, but felt his influence in Video and Computer Gaming, which is what got me interested in Data Warehousing and programming in the first place. My first full game a text based “GOTO 10″ Basic program where an adventurer of your choosing (class system) would go into a dungeon, fight skeletons, and find the treasure. From there, on to object oriented programming, which I abandoned for Database Theory and Marketing. But, I still play the RPG games, both the old and the new…and his influence has forever changed the face of gaming, both digital, and “real” world.

So here’s to you Mr. Arneson. I hope where ever you are, your 1D20 rolls will always be at least 18.

In homage, here’s a iPhone pic of what’s been cycling on my Television the last 5 days as my brother has been visiting and playing all the classics I have. 10 cool points if anyone can identify the D & D influenced game. It’s an oldie.

Here is a geek relief inspired by Jeremy’s “If only Aristotle did Data Warehousing”.

“He who will not normalize will have to agonize.”
Confucius

“It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase ‘As pretty as a data model’ appear.”
Douglas Adams

“That which kills the Intelligence Server, makes it weaker.”
Nietzsche

“The Analytical Engine does not play dice.”
“Relativity is when a parent child relationship can be defined as many to many.”
Albert Einstein

“I bet this Data Warehouse thing needs our protection.”
Al Capone

“A six month Data Warehouse project begins with a single man-day. It never ends.”
Lao-Tzu

“In the beginning there was no data, which then exploded.”
“THERE IS NO RELATIONAL MODEL. THERE IS ONLY ME.”
Terry Pratchett

“Data Warehouse is one with everything”
Ralph Kimball

“Everything is one with Data Warehouse”
Bill Inmon

“Things turned out to be quite different than I expected.”
E.F. Codd

“What’s in a name? That which we call a metric
By any other name will aggregate as sweet.”
Shakespeare

“Struggling to achieve a perfect data model is like tilting at windmills, except you don’t end up covered in flour.”
Miguel de Cervantes

“If you want to make a report from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
Carl Sagan