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Business Insights

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Timestamp Functions and Presentation Variables in Oracle Cloud Analytics

One of the most popular Rittman Mead blog posts over the last 10 years is Timestamps and Presentation Variables. As we are seeing more and more migrations to OAC, we decided to review and revise this post for the latest version of Oracle Cloud Analytics (OAC), 105.4.0-140 as

Business Insights

Enabling A Modern Analytics Platform

Over recent years, bi-modal analytics has gained interest and, dare I say it, a level of notoriety, thanks to Garnter’s repositioning of its Magic Quadrant in 2016. I’m going to swerve the debate, but if you are not up to speed, then I recommend taking a look here

Unify

Unify: Could it be any easier?

Rittman Mead’s Unify is the easiest and most efficient method to pull your OBIEE reporting data directly into your local Tableau environment. No longer will you have to worry about database connection credentials, Excel exports, or any other roundabout way to get your data where you need it to

Oracle Data Integrator

The Case for ETL in the Cloud - CAPEX vs OPEX

Recently Oracle announced a new cloud service for Oracle Data Integrator. Because I was helping our sales team by doing some estimates and statements of work, I was already thinking of costs, ROI, use cases, and the questions behind making a decision to move to the cloud. I want to

Technical

OBIEE Component Status Notifications

At Rittman Mead, we often hear requests for features or solutions generally not provided by Oracle. These requests range from commentary functionality to custom javascript visualizations. There are many ways to implement these functionalities, but organizations often lack the in-house resources to engineer an acceptable solution. Rittman Mead has the

Performance

New Performance Analytics Release

Poor performance is one of the most common complaints we hear upon arrival to customer sites, and often for good reason. When users have time to “make the rounds” before the system returns a result (if it returns a result at all), they have the right to be frustrated. Unfortunately,

OBIEE12c

Financial Reports - which tool to use? Part 2

Financials in BI Publisher## I find it interesting that BI Publisher is mostly known for the creation of pixel perfect repeating forms (invoices, labels, checks, etc) and its ability to bursting them. To me, BI Publisher is the best kept secret for the most challenging reports known to mankind. In

Technical

OBIEE 12.2.1.1.0 - New Feature Guide

Oracle has recently released version 12.2.1.1.0 for OBIEE 12c, which has a variety of exciting new features for Data Visualization, BI Publisher, Dashboards in OBIEE, and ODBC connections. It can be performed as an in-place upgrade (performed by the Upgrade Assistant) or as a fresh install.

obiee

Announcing OBI Remote Training

Since the release of OBIEE 12c in 2015, we have received countless inquiries about how we would be offering our training. Our customers are familiar with our ability to provide on-site private training for a team and we are well known for hosting training classes in our offices in the

Technical

System Metrics Collectors

The need to monitor and control the system performances is not new. What is new is the trend of clever, lightweight, easy to setup, open source metric collectors in the market, along with timeseries databases to store these metrics, and user friendly front ends through which to display and analyse

Technical

Connecting Oracle Data Visualization Desktop to OBIEE

Recently at Rittman Mead we have been asked a lot of questions surrounding Oracle’s new Data Visualization Desktop tool and how it integrates with OBIEE. Rather than referring people to the Oracle docs on DVD, I decided to share with you my experience connecting to an OBIEE 12c instance

Technical

Rittman Mead at KScope16

June is the perfect month: summer begins, major football (and futbol) tournaments are in full swing, and of course, KScope16 is on! Rittman Mead have participated in many of the past KScope conferences and will continue that tradition this year with a wide range of presentation and training topics across

Technical

#IHateYourFace, a BizIntel Love Story

Sometimes love isn't fair A teenager, just emerging from an awkward growing phase drives a tendency to spew non sensical permutations of varying cringe worthy affections toward their love target.  The data points behind the intent are solid.  Let’s go Boolean now: Intent of good = 1 ; attracted to target

Technical

Oracle's New Data Visualization Desktop

A recent addition to the Oracle lineup of visualization tools is the Oracle Data Visualization Desktop. Described by Oracle as a “single user desktop application that provides Oracle Data Visualization functionality to business users,” DVD is an easy-to-install data visualization tool for Windows 7, 8 or 10 that packs some

Technical

Experiments with Elastic’s Graph Tool

Elastic announced their Graph tool at ElastiCON 2016 (see presentation here). It’s part of the forthcoming X-Pack which bundles Graph along with other helper tools such as Shield and Marvel. Graph itself is two things; an extension of Elasticsearch’s capabilities, enabling the user to explore how items indexed

Big Data

Rittman Mead at Collaborate 16: Data Integration Focus

It’s that time of year again when Oracle technologists from around the world gather in Las Vegas, Nevada, to teach, learn, and, of course, network with their peers. The Collaborate 16 conference, running for 10 years now, has been a collaboration, if you will, between the Independent Oracle Users

Technical

ChitChat: The Importance of BI Integrations

A user's workflow shouldn't change to accommodate a new tool. A new tool should fill a gap in the current workflow and help streamline the user's process. An application without a clearly defined scope eventually overlaps with existing solutions, creating confusion and distress among users. It takes both time and

Technical

New OTN Article - OBIEE Performance Analytics: Analysing the Impact of Suboptimal Design

I’m pleased to have recently had my first article published on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN). You can read it in its full splendour and glory(!) over there, but I thought I’d give a bit of background to it and the tools demonstrated within. OBIEE Performance Analytics Dashboards

Technical

The Importance of BI Documentation

Why Is BI Documentation Important? Business intelligence systems come with a lot of extra information. Even beautifully constructed analyses have piles of background information and histories. Administrators might often have memos and updates that they’d like share with analysts. Sales figures might have anomalies that need further explanation. But

Technical

Use OBIEE to Achieve Your GOOOALS!!! - A Presentation for GaOUG

Background A few months before the start of the 2014 World Cup, Jon Mead, Rittman Mead's CEO, asked me to come up with a way to showcase our strengths and skills while leveraging the excitement generated by the World Cup. With this in mind, my colleague Pete Tamisin and I

Technical

The Importance of BI Commentary

Why Is Commentary Important? We communicate every day. Communication through text is especially abundant with the proliferation of new on-demand technologies. Have you gone through your emails today? Have you read the news, weather, or blogs (like this one)? Communication is the backbone to every interpersonal interaction. Without it, we

Big Data

OBIEE 12c - Your Answers After Upgrading

Several blogs have already been written about new functionality in OBIEE 12c. Mark Rittman, for example, posted a good one here. Now, I've personally had the chance to play with it for a few weeks, mostly in Answers and some with the RPD, and wanted to share my experience. With

Technical

ChitChat - Commentary Made Simple

Rittman Mead is excited to announce ChitChat, an innovative new communication tool for OBIEE. Rittman Mead’s clients already receive the best Oracle Business Analytics and Data Integration consulting and training. Now, in a major expansion of our business capabilities, our clients can enjoy the benefits of our engineering team’

Technical

Rittman Mead Sponsors Georgia Oracle Users Group's Tech Day

As part of Rittman Mead’s continuing support and participation in the Oracle community, we are proudly sponsoring this year’s Georgia Oracle Users Group’s Tech Day on Thursday, March 3, 2016, in Downtown Atlanta at the Executive Conference Center. Rittman Mead’s own Consulting Manager, Andy Rocha, will

Technical

OBIEE Performance - Why Metrics Matter (and…Announcing obi-metrics-agent v2!)

One of the first steps to improve OBIEE performance is to determine why it is slow. That may sound obvious—can’t fix it if you don’t know what you’re fixing, right? Unfortunately, the “Drunk Man anti-method”, in which we merrily stumble from one change to another, maybe