Week 6

Intro to MDX..
Never heard bout it before but soon after i have a quick glance of this weeks tutorial I know that its going to be anything like SQL queries and stuff..
Still having the same "hot" class even though I've tried to swap around different tutorial time with Steve.. Or maybe the problem is Steve? LOL

Decided to finish my tute ASAP but stuck with the not so friendly Monash security allowance..
I did all of the steps closely, wanting not to have any error at the end.. I saved my "pivot" file on the U drive (which is suppose to be my personal drive).. Everything is good up till the end.. And when I process it, it says some weird error like "OLE DB ERROR, can not find the path" or "misspelled path" which make the whole process failed..

Decided to play around and found out lastly, something wrong with the U drive..
You can not do it through U drive.. When I change the data source and put the file in the desktop, it works PERFECTLY...

Argh.. Monash!!

Week 5 - lecture

This week coverage:
.Technology environment in developing BI apps.
.Role of data warehouse.
.Evolution of OLAP technology.

Quick summary of what I got in this week lecture:
.Technology needed by BI apps:

• intuitive access

• speed

• data from many sources

• flexible, attractive reports

.Simple BI architecture does not work

• revised with new architecture that got DATA WAREHOUSE on it

.BI and data warehouse

• BI may say "I don't need data warehouse" and vice versa

• BUT, main goal of BI: provide an easy, powerful, fast system

.Data warehouse

• may have redundancy

• well integrated

• time variant

• non-noisy data

• subject oriented

.Differences between OLAP and DW(data warehouse)

• DW is better at: Handling sparse data (?), Data volatility, Large numbers of dimensions, Large volumes of data, Development time(application evolution), Learning curve, Standards, interoperability, Data loading time (?)
  

• OLAP is better at: Calculation intensity, complexity, Handling complex drill hierarchies , Query response time, Consistency, reliability, Network impact, General ease of use for end-users, Development time (function evolution), Cost of simple deployment?
  

.DW vs OLAP

• OLAP is FAST!!

• DW deals with gathering data from multiple sources

• The rest is OLAP

.12 Codd's rules

• **Refer to lecture note**

Week5 - tute

I officially start my day in uni today @7pm for tute with Steve..
Today's tute is really really FUN!!! (letting him notice even more that I haven't come to tute last week, that i just start being so excited to play around and get the feel of pivot table)..
I did my tute up to task4 and decided to follow it up tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the next day of the day after tomorrow.. Got enough stuff to do atm..
I was so excited that I decided to take a snapshot of it..

There was error messages comes up to me several times..

First one was my mistake in choosing the type of database that I want to make a connection to.. I just quickly choose the .mdb extension without realizing that i choose the one called "driver do Microsoft database".. I should actually choose "Microsoft access driver" that have the same extension, .mdb
One problem was solved!

Second error message was on my way doing task3 where we were asked to specify the connection to the database server.. I am sure that I have put the right server name and username + password.. So I decided to just re-do and trata... magic!! It works..
I come to Steve and he said it may be because around 30students trying to access the server at the same time that it starts to deny some access.. It does make sense!!

All problems solved!! Go to lecture..

let's hope i can catch up

i know that we are in week5 now.. but what else can i do?
i've been wondering inside my head asking should i do this blog or not?

since what POD always said, as i've been having him as my lecturer for the third time now, that "you can do it or not, but blogging is good", so i decided to do it anyway..

it's not that i disagree about blogging.. but the thing is i've been stuck with my honours preparation that i haven't put many of my spare time to do other things than for the research itself..

sounds selfish uh? nope.. now that i feel like settling down a lil bit, i'll start blogging and allocating enough time for all.. haha

i don't think i can do the week by week posts, it's going to be 5weeks back, so, i'll start with whatever i got in my mind..
as POD always do, he has succesfully impress and stimulate me right from the very first lecture..
the demo showing a business inteligince apps has keep me awake too..

i don't do much on tutorial yet, but i remember steve asking each of us about what will u buy with $5000 given to u? i said dell laptop, but i forgot the name at the time, it is adamo.. which is i wont buy if the money is not given to me for free haha..

hm.. i'll stop here and try to post regularly afterwards..