Bob Lambert

Jazz on the harmonica

Tag: Business Intelligence

  • Sound Data Culture Enables Modern Data Architectures

    Modern data architectures, by enabling data analytics insights, promise to drive order of magnitude value gains across many business sectors (here, here, and here). Not so long ago, big data presented a daunting challenge. Although tools were plentiful, we struggled to conceptualize the architecture and organization within which to capitalize on those tools. Now solid…

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  • Fixing Tableau Desktop Blue Screen or Unresponsive

    Tableau desktop (10.2.2 on Windows 7 at work) was consistently locking up my computer or causing a BSOD when I tried to start it. After struggling for a while trying to solve the problem, I found out it was because it used all resources when opening the log file, which had over time grown to…

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  • Leader’s Data Manifesto Annual Review: “It’s About the Lopez Women”

    A year ago I recounted proceedings from the 2017 EDW World conference, which included release of the Leader’s Data Manifesto (LDM). Last week’s EDW World 2018 served as a one-year status report on the Manifesto. The verdict: there’s still a long way to go, but speakers and attendees report dramatic progress and emergence of shared…

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  • The PDDQ Framework: Lean Data Quality for Patient Records

    For most of us it may have slipped under the radar, but in December a groundbreaking Patient Demographic Data Quality framework was jointly released by a US government agency and the CMMI Institute. In response to findings that many “safety-related events were caused by or related to incorrect patient identification”, the Office of the National Coordinator…

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  • Escaping Teradata Purgatory (Select Failed. [2646] No more spool space)

    Also see the related post More on “Select Failed. [2646] No more spool space” If you are a SQL developer or data analyst working with Teradata, it is likely you’ve gotten this error message: “Select Failed. [2646] No more spool space”. Roughly speaking, Teradata “spool” is the space DBAs assign to each user account as…

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  • The Practical Metadata Business Case

    Even now the business case for a metadata tool seems unclear and difficult to quantify, but it isn’t impossible. We in the data management business tend to devalue solutions that don’t clearly derive from a coherent top-level view. We seek applications defined from an enterprise architecture, database designs from an enterprise data model, and data…

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  • Reporting Database Design Guidelines: Dimensional Values and Strategies

    I recently found myself in a series of conversations in which I needed to make a case for dimensional data modeling. The discussions involved a group of highly skilled data architects who were surely familiar with dimensional techniques but didn’t see them as the best solution in the case at hand. I thought it would…

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  • Data Quality, Evolved

    Data quality doesn’t have to be a train wreck. Increased regulatory scrutiny, NoSQL performance gains, and the needs of data scientists are quietly changing views and approaches toward data quality. The result: a pathway to optimism and data quality improvement. Here’s how you can get on the new and improved data quality train in each of those…

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  • A New Direction for Data at #EDW17

    Obviously, data management is important. Unfortunately, it is not prioritized in most organizations. Those that effectively manage data perform far better than organizations that don’t. Everyone who needs data to do his/her job must drive change to improve data management. That was the theme of the recent Enterprise Data World (EDWorld) conference this week. This year’s EDWorld event might be the…

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  • Tableau Rollout Across Five Dimensions

    Standing up any new analytics tool in an organization is complex, and early on, new adopters of Tableau often struggle to include all the complexities in their plan. This post proposes a mental model in the form of a story of how Tableau might have rolled out in one hypothetical installation to uncover common challenges for…

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