Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Best Practices...

Recently we we had to move our sql servers from the business unit to the technology unit so that the sql servers could follow certain guidelines and best practices. When the move happened and I was ready to test sql scripts on the new sql servers which follow certain guidelines to handle security,user access and what is allowed/not allowed with respect to database objects. While I was performing the tests I ran into some errors and noticed that i was missing some scalar functions, on further inspection the functions were supposed to be available on the master database. I raised a flag here and noted that custom user defined functions and stored procedures had been created on the master database on the older sql server's. When database development  was done on these servers obviously certain guidelines and standards were not followed. Lack of adhering to standards ended up creating a clean up project which involved moving the custom user defined database/stored procedures from the master database to the user defined database. Based on what i have read/listened to in sql server classes, one should avoid creating custom user defined functions and stored procedures on the system databases of sql server such as master,msdb and tempdb. It is always a good idea to follow/enforce certain guidelines while working on database development projects.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Mobile BI...

The paradigm of computing keeps changing, in the last couple of years there were new platform which have made in roads and are in process of becoming firmly established. Platforms like cloud computing, mobile frameworks such as smartphones,tablets are continuing to grow, given this perspective it seems like BI is moving into mobile space. Microstrategy has come out in a big way by making BI available on the ipad at the same time direction from Microsoft in this space is not very clear. It is kind of interesting because Microsoft is now pushing windows phone 7. There are other vendors who have come out with BI offerings for the mobile platform. Here are a couple of vendors which i have researching and going through the offerings.
RoamBI: http://www.roambi.com/, the second vendor i am looking at is: http://www.pushbi.com/. I am looking to attend some free webcasts to get an idea of the products. I also questions in mind as to how much value can BI on mobile platform can offer to the Business user.