No Time to Chat

Decked out in pirate garb we picked up at a discount this afternoon, Kellie and I headed to a Halloween party at Bailey’s Grove. Check us out!

Arrrhhhh! Scuuurvy.

After wrapping up the conference on Wednesday, I took the rest of the day to visit Epcot with my parents (who flew down Tuesday night). We hit all the major rides and enjoyed the wine and food event going on at all of the countries. Thursday, we visited Hollywood Studios and stayed for the fantastic show Fantasmic. Friday, we wrapped up with Animal Kingdom. It was an awesome trip!

http://picasaweb.google.com/chad.kettner/DisneyWorld2008

The conference wrapped up at noon today after discussing ETL (extraction, transformation, and loading) and governance. The ETL discussion peaked my interest as it discussed SAP Netweaver BI 7.0 and the changes from SAP BW 3.5 in how data is transformed and loaded. Instead of using transfer rules, infosources, and update rules, SAP has moved (with BI 7.0) to using just DTPs (data transfer processes). This shift allows taking data from any source, applying 1 to many transformations, and loading to any target (or exporting to any destination). This seems like a good move as it removes a lot of the complexity of loading data (think start routines and multiple places to look for data manipulation). There was also mention about better control (or elimination) of data packet sizes. This allows better handling of data when you need it grouped for transformations (think about applying logic to a customer based on the customer’s total records when those records are split across multiple data packages). This is a nightmare that we face in several loads at Steelcase today. In addition to this, there was some verification that loading to a base layer of ODS/DSO structures and utilizing lots of data marts for reporting is the current best practice.

The last section today discussed the concept of the BICC (Business Intelligence Competency Center). This is another term and methodology for control of BI projects and data to ensure that all efforts coalesce toward the greater good of having a reliable, accurate, and useful EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse). Due to recent changes made to our systems at Steelcase in the name of control and governance, I hesitate a little to show support for such things, but in the case of BI, I can see the value. We currently have a system which is quite inaccurate, redundant, and slow. It is taking the combined effort of the entire BI team to slowly reverse this and the negative connotations that BI has in the minds of the business users. There seem to be two approaches to creating a BICC: the top-down and the bottom-up approaches. The former can really only be undertaken when starting a new BI system and even then, takes a long time to realize. The latter (and the approach I think Steelcase should take as we mature in our use of BI) involves using each subsequent project to further define and create the BICC. This is really the only choice we have since there is so much data already in our corporate warehouse.

All in all, I felt that the conference did a good job addressing the impact that the Business Object acquisition is having on SAP and specifically SAP Netweaver BI. I’ve learned a lot about the new tools, how they fit into the BI architecture, and what to look forward to in BI 7.0. Now it’s on to a couple of fun days at Disney!

Today has been another jam-packed day at SAP & BO conference. The sessions focused more on the tools and technologies introduced in the Business Object product suite and how best to leverage them for the variety of tasks that business information consumers demand. Some time was spent in defining these categories: for differentiating reporting (simple view with little to no drilldown) from analysis (OLAP slice and dice - format isn’t as important) and further breaking reporting into dashboards (specialized reports with multiple data information points that can cause you to “dash” away to work on some problem), cockpits (dashboards with a specific and set style), and scorecards (long-term metrics that help to show the overall picture). It was nice to get some definition and clarity around those terms.

We also spent some time covering the hardware and software resources needed to get the new product suite working and how to both set up the landscape and architecture. Landscape involves the role of servers and hardware to properly size and scale your Business Objects investment. Architecture refers more to the order in which the data travels from source to end-user. Most of the front-end tools are thin clients (i.e. run on the web) while the back-end tools like the BOE (Business Objects Environment) server and Universe Designer software are obviously not. Throughout the entirety of the presentations today, it was stressed that reporting should always be done against small data sets that is highly aggregated for the specific reporting purposes. Xcelsius, the dashboarding tool, says that more than 500 records of data is too much (50 or less is recommended). This means that a lot more work needs to be done in your EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) to prepare the data for consumption. Thankfully, this is a direction that I’ve been working toward with some others on the BI team at Steelcase. Historically, the BI team has built a big ODS/DSO with every field possible and given that to the users to report against. We’ve long known that it doesn’t provide a good user experience but previous BI designers didn’t know of any better way to provide all that data.

One last point I want to touch on is a pervasive pulse flowing through the crowd at the conference. Not only is Business Objects now an additional cost that customers of SAP need pay to continue reporting against data (front-end tools), it’s also looking to be much more complex from an IT side - thus causing many IT administrators much concern. One gentleman spelled it out very well and the speakers had no retort (I think they secretly agreed). He said that today IT is involved in extracting the data from the source, modeling an infoProvider for that data, then turning it over to the business to create queries, then reports (Analyzer) and web applications (WAD). In the BO world, there are several additional layers that are needed to utilize the new tools. The starting point for these new tools is the Universe, a concept that seems similar to an infoProvider in BW yet is built from the query object itself. Once the Universe is set up, the BO tools such as WebI, Voyager, and Crystal Reports can work. So the question was asked, who is responsible for those new steps? Historically, IT hands off control after the infoProvider is built but in the post BO acquisition world, it seems that IT needs to also build the query and then build the Universe. In addition, there are extra server and support costs associated with the whole model and what is the overall gain? What if your users are already happy with BEx? While it seems that many of the new tools have a nice look and feel (and the business users rejoice!), that may not be enough to win over the hearts of the IT staff as they’re faced with an ever increasing workload already. The jury is still out.

I’m here in sunny Orlando, Florida this week to attend the Reporting & Business Intelligence with SAP and Business Objects 2008 seminar. My manager sent me to this conference to learn about the impact of the SAP acquisition of Business Objects during the last year and what that means for BI, BW, BEx, and reporting at Steelcase. We’ve just concluded day one and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen and heard so far.

Business Objects is a toolset that allows reporting against various datasources and is known for being extremely user-friendly and flexible. From the slides and talks today, that seems to be true and I’m impressed by some of the features of this suite. I can see the reason why SAP finally decided to stop competing with BO and instead purchased them: the product is much better than BEx Analyzer and Web Application Designer (WAD for short). As mentioned before, the BO tools also have the flexibility of pulling data from multiple sources - not just BW (since renamed to BI and further renamed to EDW). Although SAP envisions BW (or BI or EDW) as continuing to be the primary back-end for the software, it’s nice that it does not have to be the only. I think the information consumers at Steelcase will find this a major advantage over the BEx suite.

What I find somewhat disturbing, is the perceived notion that SAP is dropping support for the current BEx suite without replacing it with anything else under contract. What that means is that under a contract today, a customer of SAP who has purchased BW/BI/EDW has purchased both the back-end tools for modeling, ETL, and maintaining the data warehouse and also the front-end tools for reporting on that data. It seems that SAP is dropping those front-end tools and promoting these premium products of the business objects suite. I heard a few times (although it seemed the presenters and reps from the companies were beating around the bush) that there is an extra (and substantial) charge to get these new front-end tools. SAP is taking away functionality that its customers have paid for and asking them to pony up for the new tools. That doesn’t sit well with me. Now granted, SAP isn’t dropping support for the existing BEx tools until 2016 or something like that but it has already ceased all new development on any of those tools.

I’ve seen some quick demos of the new tools: Voyager, Pioneer, BPC, Web Intelligence (pronounced Weby), and Crystal Reports. They all look nice but until you get some seat time with them, it’s hard to gauge how much of it is just marketing fluff. The speakers have mostly been engaging and confident in their topics but press them with questions just outside of their presentation material and the answers quickly become vague. The exceptions (so far) have been David Dixon and Bryan Katis. Dixon, come to find out, is the author of Mastering the Business Data Warehouse, a book that we have on hand at Steelcase. Small world…

I’ve been giving the thought of commuting to work by bicycle a lot of thought lately and found a website last night that just might have sealed the deal. I stumbled upon Paul Dorn’s Bike Commuting Tips, which is a nicely laid out document on how to start commuting and what is needed to make it successful and enjoyable. The information alleviated some of my concerns and lead me to do some searching on the perfect commuter bike. I found that Jamis makes a few commuter bikes and although I love my current Jamis road bike, their street bikes don’t come with everything I want on a bike meant for such duty.

I then came across Breezer Bikes, which seem to be exactly what I envision in a commuter: fenders, rack, lights, chainguard, kickstand, comfortable seating and positioning. It also sports internal hub gearing through the new Shimano Nexus 8 speed red line and another hub in front to power the lighting system - which, btw, is auto on/off and remains lit while at a stoplight or otherwise at night. I’m planning to look into this further in the spring by paying a visit to Dan’s Bike Shop in Ionia (the only local dealer). Until then, I’m going to pursue my other effort at efficient commuting: public transportation.

Today must be home improvement day: shortly after finishing the last project of installing an outdoor outlet, I headed to Lowes and picked up a clear piece of Plexiglas and a hook. My goal? To create a dishrag holder on the inside of the cabinet door below the sink. I’m a tidy freak and like clutter tucked away in its place: out of sight. This hook also serves the purpose of keeping the rag from continually getting wet while straddling the ridge between the two bowls of the sink. I reason that this will help keep the bacteria in the rag at bay as that bacteria needs moisture to survive. So, for $7.14 at Lowes, this is the end product.

About a week ago, Kellie and I decided that we wanted to put our light-up Halloween pumpkin outside on the front porch instead of keeping it in the front window as we did last year. The problem, we found, was that the condo has no electrical outlet outside in the front of the house. There’s one or two on the backside by the porch and patio but that’s rather inconvenient for our need. After noodling the dilemma for a few minutes, I decided to put a hole in the side of the garage for the extension cord with the thought of installing an outdoor electrical outlet at some later date.

Today saw the completion of this small project! I owe a big thanks to Jason Pursell for helping with most of the install. While this certainly isn’t a difficult task by any means, it’s nice to have someone who has more experience with home improvement along for the work. We jigged out the hole for the box, fight the hardware together, wired it up to the junction box nearby, and finished with weather proofing. Here’s the finished product with which I’m VERY happy! Total cost was $16.35 from Lowes.

Outside

Inside

This evening I discovered that playing chef is deeply satisfying. Kellie and I invited Katie and her husband Bryan over for dinner at our condo and I seized the opportunity to prepare a delicious and appealing four-course meal (at least in my opinion!). I chose an Italian theme for the evening and sourced most of my ingredients from Fresh Market this afternoon. That store has some of the freshest and most organic ingredients compared to the traditional grocery stores in the area. I’m a fan now. For an appetizer, I mixed together ten seasonings and spices with olive oil for dipping with some warm Italian bread. Next was a pear and walnut spring salad with added chicken for those of us who aren’t vegetarian. Any guess as to the dressing used? If you said Italian… well, you’d be right. The main course was Quinoa Risotto with Parmesan (substituted by necessity to Colby Jack) cheese, another excellent dish from my favorite boot-shaped country. After playing some Wii and enjoying some wine, I finished with Zabaglione drizzled over vanilla ice cream flanked by raspberries. It was my masterpiece and if I never cook another meal, I’ll still die a happy man.

It was great to catch up with the VanDorn’s too. Tonight renews my desire to reconnect and maintain friendships with those I’ve lost touch with due to busyness and distance.

I spent the majority of this week in High Point, North Carolina at Steelcase’s Brayton International subsidiary. I visited this same location during a similar trip back in June of this year. This trip involved assurance testing of the design and development work I’ve done over the past several months in an attempt to help automate and bring the Coalesse commission and incentives programs to SAP. We had several good sessions and the conclusion saw all of my goals accomplished. I hope the fine folks from Brayton had all of their questions answered too. One bonus on this trip (aside from finding a few new local dining establishments) is that I brought a camera.

http://picasaweb.google.com/chad.kettner/OctoberBraytonTrip