Countless organizations have created mature dimensional data warehouses that are considered tremendous successes within their organizations. These data warehouse environments support key reporting and analysis requirements for the enterprise. Many are capable of supporting self-serve data access and analysis capabilities for disparate business users. Nonetheless, regardless of the success achieved by these dimensional data warehouses, […]

With their graphically appealing user interfaces, dashboards and their scorecard cousins are demo superstars. Dashboards have really grabbed the attention of senior management since they closely align with the way these people operate. What’s not to like about the promise of performance feedback on every customer or supplier facing process in the organization at a glance. It’s no […]

“Oh, we’ll handle that in the tool” is the refrain we sometimes hear from design teams. Instead, whenever possible, we suggest you invest the effort to architect as much flexibility, richness, and descriptive information directly into your dimensional schemas as possible rather than leaning on the capabilities of the tool metadata as a crutch. Today’s business intelligence (BI) […]