On Data Minning ,your unknown grandmother and information monsters

A very interesting article i came across today :

It is an interview with Shumeet Baluja ,a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google, speaking about data minning,information research and getting information on people who aren't even a part of your structured data:

http://www.calcalist.co.il/local/articles/0,7340,L-3525863,00.html

SAP will integrate Google Maps

SAP will cooperate with Google Maps,after Centigon has already integrated Google Maps in Xcelsius,

now comes SAP  turn to targer to one of the hottest areas of BI -Data Visualization in a geographic context/

read here the original article that was published by SAP 

http://www.sap.com/about-sap/newsroom/press-releases/press.epx?pressid=17358

Watch the demo here :

http://analytics.news-sap.com/2011/07/25/demo-sap-and-google-team-for-location-based-intelligence/

Who moved my universe ?

One of the most unpleasant symptoms that can happen to a busy BI team are universe overrides by different designers.In general , universe overrides shouldn't happen and by determining simple working processes, keeping the team synchronized and updated and making sure that the universe life cycle is secured we should get a healthy environment . But what happens when someone exports the universe to production against the regulation?

As the team manger, finding out who exported the universe last can help you improve the change management and simply know who was the last person that updated the universe which can be a very important information. This information can be pulled out from the Activity universe and by crossing this information with the CMC, you can know for sure.

The following query is based on the Activity universe (Oracle based) and will pull out all the changes that were made in a particular universe in a specific date.  

Please note:   The changes are not necessarily describing export actions of the universe and therefore i recommend to Identify the last record of the export by looking in the CMC, under universes, you can find a column next to The name of the universe that shows the last update date, this date will also appear in the report and by crossing these records you will get the correct answer to "who exported the universe last?"  

Here is the query script:

 Table__37.DETAIL_TEXT,   AUDIT_EVENT.User_Name, AUDIT_EVENT.Start_Timestamp +( (3/24) )FROMAUDIT_EVENT,( SELECTAUDIT_DETAIL.Detail_Text,AUDIT_EVENT.Event_ID FROMAUDIT_DETAIL,AUDIT_EVENTWHEREAUDIT_DETAIL.Event_ID=AUDIT_EVENT.Event_ID AND AUDIT_EVENT.Event_Type_ID = 65544) Table__37WHERE( Table__37.EVENT_ID=AUDIT_EVENT.Event_ID )AND (( ( Table__37.DETAIL_TEXT ) LIKE '%' @Variable('enter teh universe name or part of the universe name ') '%' )AND Table__37.DETAIL_TEXT NOT LIKE '%Everyone%'AND Table__37.DETAIL_TEXT NOT LIKE '%/%'AND ( ( trunc(AUDIT_EVENT.Start_Timestamp) ) BETWEEN @Prompt('from action date','A','Action Time\Action Date',mono,free)AND @Prompt(' till action date','A','Action Time\Action Date',mono,free) ))

How will Designer look like in the next version ?

Version BI4 is officially out and among all articles and presentations that you can find online here is a very good one written by Joshua Fletcher, who presents the new Designer capabilities:

http://geek2live.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Joshua-Fletcher_Day-2_Track-C_13.25-v2.pdf

The roadmap of HANA

Here is  another taste of what can we expect from HANA in the upcoming years :

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24398

BI4 Knowledge Center

If you want to know exactly what awaits for you in the next version of SAP Business Objects and

what changes are about to be made you can enter the following link and read all the new manuals

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/bi

The future of BI by Timo elliott

A question that always on my mind: how will  BI look like in 5 / 10 years from now...?
Timo elliot from SAP speaks and presents the vision of SAP in a series of presentations and videos :

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2010/07/presentation-the-future-of-business-intelligence.html

Matrix acquires 75% from Matchpoint for 10 million Shekels

Matrix continues its acquisition campaign and according to estimates, in order to improve efficiency and continue to be a major player in the Israeli IT market Match point have been acquired.

Match point specializes in outsourcing

Read original article here:
http://www.calcalist.co.il/internet/articles/0,7340,L-3517367,00.html

Saleforce acquired Radian6

When I reviewed the future of the BI at the end of last year I expected that social network layer will begin to trickle into the BI layer.

While SAP has already begun to develop products that integrates the organization social network data,

Saleforce is one of the first companies to make significant step towards implemeting social networks by purchasing Radian6which  is the leading supplier of social media monitoring.

Here is the link for the original article:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/salesforce-buys-social-media-monitoring-company-radian6-for-326-million/

SAP and IBM Test SAP In-Memory Appliance

The innovation war continues:

SAP will collaborate with IBM (which bought Cognos) in order to integrate the in memory technologies.

Currently DB2 is beeing tested .

If we wll also consider the replication server of SAP the and intention to replace the usual load services, we have a more immediate view on the future of the BI and technological environment

that awaits us:

http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/press.epx?pressid=14906

http://it.themarker.com/tmit/article/14603