Is Gartner Now Distributing SAP Press Releases as Analysis?

November 19, 2011

Background I was recently pretty well floored when I read an piece by Gartner titled “SAP Throws Down the Next-Generation Architecture Gauntlet With HANA.” I had to write an article on it. Article Analysis The article begins with some very flowery language. One sentence caught my eye. The vision is very ambitious, and, at the same time, [...]

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The Amazing Disappearing BI Reports

July 3, 2011

Background For those who don’t know much about the SAP Business Intelligence product (as opposed to simply the term “business intelligence,” which could simply refer to any “computer based technique for identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data” – Wikipedia), BI seems to be a solid solution for report creation from a trusted brand, and which is integrated no [...]

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The Terrible State of Report Requirements Gathering

July 3, 2011

Background It’s interesting to listen to people talk about data warehousing and business intelligence, and how much focus there is on technology. I am curious, have you analyzed how the reporting requirements have been captured that the business intelligence team is building reports towards? If not, everyone who is interested in this field should. We have a [...]

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Why SAP BI Was Misnamed and the SAP Interpretation of Business Intelligence is Incorrect

July 2, 2011

Confusing Naming SAP BI originally started life as SAP BW or Business Warehouse. Technically speaking, SAP BI is a data warehouse. It follows one of two data warehouse designs, while TeraData follows the other. However business intelligence is not synonymous with a data warehouse. A data warehouse is the repository of information. Business intelligence may pull from [...]

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Associative Data Technologies

May 31, 2011

Background Associative data technologies (ADT) describe data modeling adjustments that are made to provide for faster association between data elements than is possible under a relational data design. Associative functionality is the reason for a host of technology that underpins conventional Online Analytical Processing (called OLAP for short). The “online” portion of the phrase essentially [...]

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SAP BI and Business Objects and How They Fit Within Business Intelligence

July 2, 2010

Sample Design Even since SAP purchase Business Objects the question of how the two solutions would be integrated has been discussed. Prior to the purchase of Business Objects (BO), BO was one of the top report creation and data mining tools. SAP has a data warehouse product called Business Warehouse (BW). So the natural integration [...]

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Understanding Planning Views: BI Reports, Alerts, and APO Screens

July 2, 2010

Reports for Planning Information It recently became my task to perform an analysis of all reports related to planning for a company that did not yet use SCM, but which used its reports as the primary method of getting information and performing planning. When Reports are the Planning System In some cases the approach on [...]

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