If there is one question we hear from almost every Dataspace client, it is, “Do I have big data?” Many clients are torn about the prospect of big data. On the one hand, having big data represents a sort of badge of honor, i.e. “We do so much business and capture so much data that […]
Big Data: What to Do if You Suspect You Have It Read More »
I build data warehouses. I understand why they’re important, I make a living from them. I also see that traditional, relational data warehouses are on the way out. Their demise is coming from a few technological advances. One of these is the ubiquitous, and growing, Hadoop. But, for small to mid-sized companies, the biggest advance is the
Death of the Data Warehouse Read More »
UPDATE: 2020 January 20 – When I originally wrote this post, the term data lake wasn’t in vogue. Well, times have changed! Nowadays, the term sandbox has largely been replaced with data lake. The concept is the same. Now, the text is updated! A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea that there are
The Business Intelligence Sandbox aka The Data Lake Read More »
I get a kick out of how vendors tout Business Intelligence. It’s usually something like, “Get more out of your data” OR “Don’t you want to be data driven?” OR “All the really cool companies are doing it, shouldn’t you?” The problem is that this doesn’t say a bit about what you can really do
You Can Only Do Two Things With BI Read More »
Are you wondering if your organization is at the point where it needs to improve its reporting capabilities and invest in a business intelligence system? This note is the first in an occasional series of emails and blog posts that describe situations that have been the impetus for Dataspace clients to build new, modern business
Signs you need BI: People are overusing MS Excel and Access Read More »
I remember watching a really good webinar one time entitled Ten Changes to Maximize the Impact of Your BI Strategy by Gartner analyst Kurt Schlegel. I found it to be well worth the hour spent on it (perhaps because it confirmed many of my own opinions!) and have recommended it to a number of folks.
What Does Business Intelligence Mean? Read More »
What is Business Intelligence? It’s the set of tools, abilities, and data required to create a picture of the world and how your organization operates in that world. In building your business intelligence capabilities, you can learn a lot by looking at a historical precedent – the rise of radar detection capabilities – and applying
Business Intelligence Radar: Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Britain Read More »
The Two Roles of a Data Warehouse Most people think of data warehouses as databases that solve reporting problems. However, it’s more useful to think of them as addressing two sets of problems: 1) Reporting, or data distribution, problems and 2) Data integration problems. In fact, Bill Inmon’s original definition of the data warehouse stated
Star Schema: Data Mart? Yes! Data Warehouse? No. Read More »
