There is a well known adage that if you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, that is a sure sign of idiocy.
In the BI world too, we come across several instances where people take it for granted that the ‘BI tool’ will magically generate insight and spur ‘intelligence’ rather than ‘idiocy’. Yet the very practices of reporting the same measures, or of creating reports for metrics just because they are now made available by the tool, without sparing any ‘intelligence’ into what will generate insight is a major cause of failures of BI.
Not since the late seventies, when Larry Ellison’s Relational Software Inc. (RSI) turned out the first commerically available RDBMS - Oracle, has there been such rapid changing of the rules (read disruption) in the database industry.
With Web 2.0 pushing enterprise adoption, and the ensuing information explosion in the maze of audio, video, data and ever-growing data warehouses, it seems that the conventional relational database systems are growing tired. With estimates of unstructured data being anywhere between 80% to 95% of all business data, and the ever changing requirements imposed by Web 2.
Recently I worked on an assignment where the Business Objects universe was designed by a business analyst. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we get the correct results in reports or queries on the universe. But it was not to be. We encountered incorrect results primarily due to two reasons:
Mixing of grains in fact tables by not using proper contexts or the aggregate navigator
Unresolved chasm traps
Accessing data in Xcelsius is pretty easy. You can have static data loaded from Excel, or dynamic data loaded through Web Services, Excel XML Maps, QaaWS (Query as a Web Service), Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence Reports or queries using Live Office.
There are however only a few ways to export data from Xcelsius. Either we could use Flash variables or use the XML Data Button to export data out of the compiled .
How can you reduce development costs and improve software reliability and accuracy at the same time? How can you make IT work together with Business while architect-ing your BI applications? If these goals sound contradictory and difficult to achieve, then Agile development may well fit the bill. Indeed in numerous BI projects, one or the other flavor of Agile is used to attain these very goals.
Defining Agile There are several Agile development methodologies available:
