Using SQL Power Software with MS Access, .csv, flat file, spreadsheets, etc.

Lately, many people have been emailing us at SQL Power Software, asking how to access flat files instead of databases - so I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the subject.

The bad news is that SQL Power software does not support flat file access out of the box. (SQL Power Architect, Wabit and DQguru are high-performance data tools, designed to work with large, industrial-size databases and data models - not excel files.)

HOWEVER: the good news is that since we use JDBC for data access, you can in fact connect to ANY data source, providing you have a working JDBC driver for that data source.

For example: want to connect to a .csv file? Just search for a "csv JDBC driver".

As we don't do a lot of flat-file work ourselves, we'd love to hear about your experiences with these situations. (Especially if you've come across a particularly good JDBC driver for a certain flat file type, so we can recommend it to others.)

For more on this topic, see the SQL Power Frequently Asked Questions:
Spreadsheets & Flat Files
Microsoft Access JDBC-ODBC bridge
Configuring JDBC Drivers

XBRL Canada IFRS Taxonomy Workshop - April 20, 2011

This event is hosted by XBRL Canada, a not-for-profit consortium of leading Canadian companies and organisations, whose role is to create and maintain XBRL taxonomies based on Canadian reporting standards, to increase the awareness, knowledge and understanding of XBRL and its uses in Canada and to stimulate and promote the adoption of XBRL in Canada. XBRL Canada is a jurisdiction of XBRL International.

Date: April 20, 2011

Time: 8:30am - 3:30pm ET

Location: Office of the CICA 277 Wellington St. West, Toronto, ON

Instructor: Eric E. Cohen, PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Breakfast at 8:00 am ET (coffee, juice and muffins will be provided)

Registration fee: $299 CDN

Visit xbrl.ca to register for this event

The Business Intelligence Forum - May 26 2011

The Business Intelligence Forum
May 26 2011 8am-noon at the Hilton Toronto
Presented by MicroStrategy

The Business Intelligence Forum offers a unique, interactive environment to gain technical insights to enhance your business intelligence initiatives and view groundbreaking BI demonstrations. You will also have the opportunity to exchange ideas with peers and industry experts and hear best practices from successful customer case studies.

To register or for more information, please contact Moe Nawaz at SQL Power Consulting:
moe@sqlpower.ca
416 221 4220 ext. 273

Agenda:
8:00am - Continental Breakfast & Registration
9:00am - Corporate Update
9:30am - Technology Demonstrations
10:15am - Networking Break
10:30am - Customer Success Stories
11:00am - Technology Demonstrations, continued
11:30am - Closing Remarks

Hilton Toronto
145 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON M5H 2L2
Canada
(416) 869-3456

Mobilizing Strategic Intelligence

Cost-effective Mobile BI technology is finally here!

If you're in the Toronto area, join us on Feb. 17 for a Free Breakfast Seminar to learn about cost-effective Mobile Business Intelligence. Register today at http://www.sqlpower.ca/consulting/page/biseminar

Agenda includes:
- The Real Business Impact of Knowledge Discovery
- How to make the most of your BI Budget
- How to quickly address end-user BI demands for a fraction of the cost
- Timely Strategic Intelligence with Mobile Devices

Seminar includes a live demo of MicroStrategy Mobile BI and a Free Continental Breakfast.

Everyone is welcome, but space is limited so reserve your spot today!

Senior Java Developers Wanted

SQL Power is currently seeking several talented Senior Java Developers to join our Business Intelligence and Data Migration software firm!

To apply, please visit:
http://www.sqlpower.ca/page/show_job?job=seniorjavadev

Our development group has a high degree of autonomy in selecting the right technologies for the job, and we sustain an incredibly fast pace of delivering new products, enhancements to our existing products, UI improvements, bug fixes. Most of our products presently have a centralized business model implemented with POJOs, on top of which is layered both a Swing user interface and a web user interface. The web UIs are based on modern technologies such as JAX-RS, jQuery, and HTML 5.

Responsibilities:

• Understand business requirements and overall product architecture;
  be able to compare and contrast them with industry norms
• Provide estimates of effort for implementing sets of new business requirements
• Design, implement, unit test, and document assigned components of the product and
  integrate with components developed by other team members
• Create proofs of concept (PoCs) to validate design assumptions and choice of technology
• Participate in Software Development process improvement activities including
  weekly status meetings
• Stay abreast of the latest developments in the Java and Open Web ecosystems
• Provide leadership, guidance and direction for more junior members of the team

Qualifications:

• 6+ years solid hands-on experience with Java development - specific experience with Swing and Servlet-based technologies
• Ability to define and analyze needs, identify risks and alternatives, propose solutions and consistently meet required deadlines
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Location: SQL Power Head Office in Toronto

Get 60% off SQL Power Architect Enterprise Edition

To help promote the new SQL Power Architect Enterprise Edition, SQL Power is offering a 60% discount on annual subscriptions for a limited time only.

http://www.sqlpower.ca/page/architect-e

Spreadsheet BI

Information Management just published an article called Best Practices for Using Spreadsheets as BI Tools... shouldn't the entire body of the article just be "DON'T!" ?

Creating Mondrian Star Schemas with Power*Architect - Part 2/2

This is part two of my step by step guide on creating a Mondrian Schema with Power*Architect.

Step 3 - Creating the Mondrian schema

• Go to OLAP-> Edit Schema -> New Schema.
• Enter a Schema name and select the database connection you created earlier.
• Dimensions
• Right click on the PlayPen, select New Dimension, and click on the PlayPen again
• Enter the dimension name, select TimeDimension as the dimension type and click on ok.
• Right click on the created dimension and add a hierarchy. Select the time table (public.dim_time) and select the correct primary key.
• Now you can add levels. Right click on the hierarchy and select Add level. Enter the name, column and correct level type.
• The procedure is the same for all dimensions.
• Cube
• Right click on the PlayPen, select New Cube, and click on the PlayPen again
• Enter the Cube name and select the fact table (public.orderfact in my example)
• Add the dimensions to the cube. Click on (Dimension Usage), then on dimension and finally on the cube. (This procedure is supposed to get easier in a later release of Power Architect).
• Enter a caption and select correct foreign key out of the fact table.
• Follow the instructions for the other dimensions.
• Measures
• To add measures to your cube, right click on the cube name, select the aggregator and the correct column from your fact table.

• Your schema should look similar to the following screenshot.

• Export the schema using the last icon (or by right clicking in the schema) to your hard drive.
• Save the project and close Power*Architect

Step 4 - Testing the Mondrian schema

• Install and start Wabit.
• Create a new Workspace with a new OLAP database connection
• Select "In-process Mondrian-Server", the database connection you already created in Power*Architect, and select your Mondrian Schema you exported earlier. You can see an example in the screenshot

• Click on "Start"
• Wabit automatically starts in the query mode.
• Select the created cube in the right hand bar. All measures and Dimensions will be listed. underneath.
• Drag&Drop the measures and dimensions into the OLAP query editor and see the results. Your result should look similar to mine (I'm using a slightly different version of Wabit).

Step 5 - Troubleshooting

If you run into problems check the following:

• HSQLDB doesn't like multiple connections too much. Make sure you have only one open connection.
• If you can't create a query with Wabit, load the Schema into the Mondrian Schema Workbench and check if it's working there. Maybe you missed something when you created the schema.
• Can't fix it? Write a comment or use the SQL Power forum.

Creating Mondrian Star Schemas with Power*Architect - Part 1/2

A few months ago I first mentioned that you can create Mondrian schemas with Power*Architect. Finally I get the time to create a step by step guide for a small Mondrian schema. This post covers the preparation of Power*Architect to create a new schema, the coming blog post will cover the schema creation and testing.

What you need to get started:

• Nightly build from Power*Architect
• A database, e.g. MySQL or PostgreSQL with the data you want to analyze. In this example I'll use the Pentaho sample data which is included in the Pentaho BI Server 3.x
• Wabit 0.97 (includes Mondrian built in)
  or a running Mondrian instance and a Mondrian client of your choice

Step 1 - Setting up the database connection

• Start Power*Architect
• Open the Connections menu and start the Database Connection Manager.
• Click on New.
• Add the database connection details. For the Pentaho sample data enter the data as shown in the screenshot (Click on it for a larger screenshot). Make sure you enter the right folder name.
  

• Test the connection and click on Ok.
• Close the Database Connection Manager.
• Open the Connections menu -> Add source connection and select the created connection

Step 2 - Visualize the data model (Optional)

If you don't know the data model, I recommend using Power*Architect to visualize it. This step is not needed for the creation of Mondrian schemas.

• Unfold the database connection and drag&drop the needed tables to the right hand PlayPen. In my example I use the tables orders, customers, dim_time and orderfact.
• Add the relationships between the tables: Click on (Non identifying relationship), on the key in the dimension table and then on the related column in the fact table.
• Add the end the model should look similar to the following screenshot.

• You can find more details on how to use Power*Architect in the help and manual.

The second part tomorrow will cover the actual schema creation and testing. Comments are welcome.

Oracles Acquisition of Sun

Well, King Larry is at it again, swooping down and buying up Sun Microsystems. To the best of my knowledge, Oracle really hasn't made a major mis-step with any acquisition that it's done. And this one is a whopper, picking up one of Silicon Valley's stalwarts and a darling of the tech crowd.

But what does it really mean?

Well, for Oracle, it gives them a number of key items:

1. A full stack, hardware on up, to allow them to offer an almost turnkey system (Solaris OS and Java). Oh, and if you want ERP solutions to run, they've got that too!
2. An entry level, easy to use, multi platform database with over 2 million installations in MySQL. In addition to acquiring the subscription revenue stream, Oracle gets access to a huge user list, and a product that has deep global penetration at all levels of business.
3. Open Office. While not a big part of the deal, nonetheless an interesting tool to jab at Microsoft with - Microsoft's Office cash cow is now under serious pressure from Google's thin client offerings at the consumer level and with Oracle's reach into corporations the Seattle boys could face considerable pressure on the desktop.
4. A bunch of other interesting technologies, including the ZFS file system, that have potential for Oracle.

Now, being an open source proponent, one has to wonder about the future of Sun's open technologies and MySQL in particular. I've seen two trains of thought on the acquisition's impact on MySQL:

A. Oracle, being the evil, mean, nasty closed source commercial giant (whew!) close sources MySQL or lets it wither and die.
B. Oracle embraces MySQL as its open source offering and continues to nurture it.

I really can't see Oracle killing off MySQL. Let's face it, they would really p*ss off a lot of people by doing that. I could see Postgres gathering steam in that scenario, or another MySQL variant rising from the ashes. And we would be right back where we are today. Looking back, everyone expected Oracle to quietly bury InnoDB when they purchased them, and that hasn't happened. In fact, InnoDB continues to be a viable engine for MySQL. I foresee an improved MySQL offering under Oracle, as Oracle's culture won't tolerate the infighting that has plagued MySQL over the past few years, and has hurt product development.

I am interested in seeing the competition's reactions to the news. Will this reinvigorate Microsoft's interest in acquiring Yahoo? What will HP, a hardware partner with Oracle, do know that their partner competes with them? And what will IBM do next?

Interesting times...