Self-service BI, or seeing cod on the moon | SCN →
An amusing take on the problem of data quality in self-service BI. See also, Steve Rumsby's musing, which kicked off the discussion.
A Comparison of BICS and OLAP BAPI for BI | SCN →
This is an important document to reference for anyone converting between different BI reporting tools in the SAP ecosystem. It's also quite an interesting enumeration of the functionality you might expect to see in an OLAP interface.
Women in BI: Having It All or Hard Choices? | BI Scorecard Blog →
Very good, important overview of the state of the current status of women and the career outlook for women in the BI and data-management industries. It seems to me we have made little progress recently. The anecdotes illustrate the many structural inequalities that still exist in the workplace.
Using Open Source Software for Data Management | Hub Designs Magazine →
The idea of commoditization of a software solution space marking the debut of OSS options works fine, but it doesn’t mean that OSS will be a successful option for all solution domains. MDM for many enterprises requires sophisticated and well-defined software capabilities that support many areas including the data management practices, processes, and roles of people that must be handled well to achieve success with MDM initiatives.
via @jmichel_franco
Jim Holincheck on analytics & domain expertise →
A good take on the shortcomings of existing BI tools.
To understand the relationships between various metrics and their root causes requires significant domain expertise. This is something traditional BI providers have lacked, in my opinion. It also requires more sophisticated analytic techniques be applied where appropriate, some of which today are beyond the skills of typical business analysts.
This evaluation around domain expertise and sophisticated techniques is, I think, especially relevant in the badly-named "predictive analytics" area, where the skills are severely lacking and general purpose tools are trying and failing to make up the difference.
Girls Lead in Science Exam, but Not in the United States - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com →
The NYTimes is on the leading edge of data visualization - far ahead of the sort of quality and variety that any pre-packaged tools provide. (See also, 2012 US election coverage.)
Do You Have BI On BI? | Forrester Blogs →
Important question. Interesting that BW has provided this sort of capability out-of-the-box (though not in a terribly usable way) in the form of "Technical Content" for some time.
Semantically Speaking | EV Technologies, Inc. →
More from Eric Vallo on semantic layers.
Big Business Intelligence: The Semantic Argument →
Post by Jamie Oswald discussing the multiple semantic layers SAP is currently supporting.