Three Points to Remember for Success With Tableau and OLAP Cubes
From time to time, clients create proof-of-concept dashboards in Excel or other relational data source and then hit a wall converting it to an OLAP cube. I’m never surprised to see it happen. What most people don’t realize is that Tableau behaves much differently when reading from a cube. This requires careful thought beforehand. Unlike […]
Using the Firefox Tilt plugin for an unconventional purpose
Tilt is self described as a “Firefox extension focused on creating a 3D visualization of a webpage, drawn using WebGL. Since the DOM is essentially a tree-like representation of a document, this tool layers each node based on the nesting in the tree, creating stacks of elements, each having a corresponding depth and being textured […]
Custom Table Calculations Part 2
This is the second post on Table Calculations in Tableau. The first post covered the Groundwork, pill types, a worksheet layout, and the basics of the TOTAL() function. This post will look at what I consider the functions: INDEX(), FIRST(), LAST(), and SIZE(), partitioning vs. addressing, and the advanced compute using dialog. I think of […]
Groundwork for Custom Table Calculations
Custom Table Calculations is one of the most advanced concepts in Tableau. The main resources Tableau provides can be found at On-Demand Training – Table Calculations (requires sign in) and Top 10 Tableau Table Calculations where you can find a variety of examples and a white paper with additional details. The capability of custom table calculations goes beyond the information provided in […]
Will Google’s New BigQuery Make an “Analytics-Style” Dent in the BI Market?
As a general Google fan, BigQuery looks like it could be an interesting project to monitor for the data crunching and BI geeks among us. The project could flop entirely due to lack of marketing or a partnership foundation — or they could really do it right as with Google Analytics. Not knowing their long […]
How to install Server 2008 R2 directly to a SAN with Intel 10 gigabit nics.
This can be regarded as a continuation to my previous post: “How to boot from iSCSI on an Intel x-520 mezzanine card (Dell Blades).” Pretty much the only reason you want to boot from iSCSI is so that you can install an operating system directly to the LUN that it attaches to. Well booting to […]
Drupal 6: Running Batch via Cron
Looking through the Drupal documentation, a person is led to believe that automating a Batch script is tantamount to moving Mount Fuji 10 feet to the left with a wooden spoon. The general consensus seems to be that all Batch scripts should be converted to use the Queue API. Sometimes this is an acceptable solution, […]
How to boot from iSCSI on an Intel x-520 mezzanine card (Dell Blades).
So I recently came across a situation where we wanted to boot a blade off of an EqualLogic SAN via the installed Intel X-520 10gbe mezzanine cards. With Broadcom it’s easy, you just enable iSCSI boot to Broadcom in the BIOS, and set it up in the CTRL-S bios setup. There is no equivalent option […]
Mobile Security Topics – Highlights from a Recent Speaking Event
Recently I was asked by a client to attend the annual Trucking Industry Defense Association (TIDA) in Las Vegas to speak about mobile device security in the workplace. This event is attended by hundreds of lawyers each year who represent the trucking industry in various capacities. With the workforce steadily becoming more mobile and conducting a […]
City of London Spending – Jan 2011 to September 2011
It’s always interesting to see where government is spending so here’s some data on a platter…