OFF-TOPIC - Britains Got Talent 2009 - Susan Boyle

I rarely put posts out of context here, but I think Susan Boyle deserves a moment in this blog. Susan has 47 years, is unemployed and wants to be a professional singer... Watch the video and then see my first comment about it...

BI Guest Corner – BI Becomes Military Intelligence

Today, I will start a new type of posts… and I’ll call it BI Guest Corner.

I will publish articles directly from visitors of “our blog”. Feel free to send me an article or some subject do you think that will be interesting and related with Business Intelligence… For example if you are currently attending a Master BI Degree or if you are involved in an interesting project, why you don’t share with us your experience? Feel free… this blog is for you and for the people that has passion on this… I'm proud that this blog receive about 80 different visitors per day... Thanks for your attention!

This article was written by Katie Wilson and I really love this article… Thanks Katie!

BI has been used for a while now in helping corporations collect, analyze and make sense of their vast amounts of data so that they’re able to make more informed decisions that benefit their organization. It’s time for a change of arena though, and the tools of business intelligence are being used intelligently by the U.S. Department of Defense to help track and monitor injured military personnel who are transported for medical care to various places around the world depending on their locations.

The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have fueled the necessity for such a system, which is why the U.S. Transportation Command has sought the services of Information Builders’ WebFocus business intelligence tools. The Transcom Regulating and Command and Control Evacuation System (Trac2es) allows the monitoring of military personnel who need medical attention while they’re in transit so that the necessary arrangements can be made for them when they reach the location of the medical facility. This allows for more effective and personalized treatment depending on the condition of each wounded or sick man.

The system includes tools for decision support, reporting and analysis, and when information regarding location and medical needs are fed in, it facilitates medical and military personnel to make better and more informed decisions. This will enable patients to receive the best medical care in the shortest possible time.

The system also allows the tracking of military personnel who have not been injured in the line of duty but who need medical attention anyway and are able to take commercial flights to get to the location of the medical facility.

The goal of the system is to improve the treatment that the injured receive and to keep the military high command informed about their condition. Besides this, it also helps improve planning for the future so that mistakes can be eliminated and patient care made more effective.

Trac2es is a multi-user system that is used by around 2,500 personnel including doctors, nurses, medical clerks and military leaders.

This post was contributed by Katie Wilson, who writes about the accreditation for online universities. She welcomes your feedback at KatieWilson06 at gmail.com

BI Conference - Self-Service BI with Rafal

Finally I found some time to describe the session that Rafal, following Microsoft invitation, held here in Portugal. As I already wrote in previous posts, Rafal in their specialty is the best in the world. A simple and objective way to show the concepts of Business Intelligence reconciled with several practical demonstrations are fantastic. Of course I attend these moments with great intensity, because they contribute, not only to continue learning, but also to mark and remember these moments. I will describe, in my opinion, the more relevant key points of the presentation.

The first point was approaching the concept of BI as a tool for self-service, where users are rewarded by a high level of autonomy for their daily needs for information.

The second point was the interesting and comical suggestion to be followed by consultants, when they want to sell their Data Warehousing solutions... they should not try to sell a Data Warehouse, but try to sell KPI's... this advise should be follow because the managers do not understand much of these technologies and are more attracted by KPI for making a mapping between their business and technology

The third point was the OLAP off-line functionality, which although this functionality already exists since Excel 2003, only now is beginning to gain more strength with the increasing importance that Excel is having nowadays. (These offline/Local cubes can be browsed by most OLAP client tools)

The fourth point is on the increasing quality of data mining Microsoft products. The feeling is that there is still a little more to move on this matter to “fight” against some competitors such as SAS (Enterprise Miner)... But it promises ... and in my BI thesis I'll show until where

The fifth and final point to highlight is the explanation of the strategy for Microsoft Performance Point Server product... especially on the discontinuation of the Planning module and the inclusion of the monitoring module through SharePoint product... soon will be called the Performance SharePoint Services.

I hope you have left with the feeling of having been present

Regards,
Pedro

BI Discussion - Concepts Oriented vs Tools Oriented

Today I will talk about an issue that I think it matters to all IT professionals... which is until the point that we should guide by the concepts and tools? There surely a point of equilibrium between the two and for that reason I’m opening this discussion to hear from you.

The recent discontinuation of the performance point server Planning module by Microsoft, was alerting me to an important problem that starts becoming increasingly important, mainly for high increasing of globalization.

In our day to day during the work or during the leisure time, we should give more importance to the concepts or to the tools? Well ... it seems a simple question to answer ... but in fact there are many professionals in this area of BI that are very targeted to the tools ... which on the one hand can give an advantage to acquire a unique know-how, but on the other hand, is somewhat to isolate that knowledge, which could bring great disappointments fruit of great changes and development of technology that is easy to aware. Who guarantees us, that tools like SAS, Microsoft, Microstrategy, Cognos, SAP ... will not be used less or simply disappear?

So, I’m increasingly seeking knowledge through concepts, for example acquired during my master BI degree at ISCTE (MSIAD), which started in 2007. So many of you ask me ... then why are you an unconditional fan of Microsoft tools? And I say that for the simple reason of being a company with a strategy geared to the communities, for customers and for students, and has tools for easily accessible, portable, flexible and a great community always ready to help ... (where you can find me at the MSDN forums or in Experts-Exchange)

With Microsoft, is easy to implement concepts in practice with their more intuitive and simple tools, because besides the risk of opting for Microsoft to be lower due to its policy of acquisitions really strong (For example the acquisition of Panorama, ProClarity, some Dundas funtionalities, DataAlegro, Mobicomp, and some day Yahoo...) there is a lower risk in terms of knowledge ... because in spite of wasting long time learning the tools, we can release time for learning the concepts that it’s for me one of the keys to success.

An interesting research from DM Review can give you a better perception about the most used tools and the reasons to be on the top… take a look here

And since we talk about keys to success, I would ask you another question... What in your perspective, the other keys to success? Do you have discovered it yet? Well ... unlike the previous question, this is undoubtedly not easy to answer ... in my opinion, the other keys to success are with no doubt the motivation and the professionalism that we show in our day to day.

By Motivation I mean focused on ourselves and in what encourage us day to day, to be better and better.

By Professionalism I mean:

Our image to others. Reflects the level of consistency, punctuality and the capacity to assume our mistakes and errors
Be organized Reflects the capacity to be organized. As my project management teacher told us in the classes, if you are not organized, how you are able to convince the others that you can organize or manage their projects?

Help me identify the keys to success! Leave your opinion... This is just my first draft...

MSIAD - Stock Market with Data Mining (BI Thesis)

I was a little absent this month in preparation for my thesis ... I promise to write more often now! Yesterday was my first battle on my dissertation, which I think it was well reached. Naturally, any research in this complex world of stock markets, in this case of applying data mining techniques, requires first understanding the financial world... I tried to demystify the complex stock market world... His movement, the factors that influence decision making, forecasting and the investor that feeds this whole game markets... and it was presented yesterday

After understanding the stock market as I did, I‘ll now focus on the application of Data Mining techniques (initially only with neural networks) and the implementation of a strategy that will be based from all rules made public by some researchers. That is, I will create a decision support system that in addition to track my portfolio of shares, it’ll generate the final output of the day that will be a buy, sell or hold signal.My strategy will assume the loss and also fix a limit on earnings. I do not need to be monitoring the stock market during the day, because I will use Stop Loss functionality in all investments that fire automatically an order of sale if the price of some share will excess my defined limit (applied only if I’m on the market)

In this matter, I'll then begin to examine in more detail the research of Dr. Chong from Chinese University of Hong Kong, that he’s the only economist, investor and researcher I know at the moment and who kindly offered me help and sent me all Articles that he has done. Dr. Chong is in the photo at right. Check his website at :

http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eco/staff/tlchong/tlchong3.htm

I already have done ETL processes to import historical data from a group of stock in my folder and a Datamart that stores the data in the form of information. It’s time to deepen into practice and return in May for a short presentation to be evaluated again. I assume the risk of this project that it’s very ambitious and attractive to me.

With nothing to lose! Regards!

Pedro

BI Conference - SQL Bits IV and Rafal Lukawiecki

SQL Bits IV

SQL Bits IV is coming… and this time it will be in Manchester, 28 of March…Unfortunately, I will not go to Manchester because I will have to expose my master BI dissertation on the day before (27th of March), but I will attend to it on-line!

My friend Tomislav Piasevoli will be responsible for the session “Universal calculated measures in MDX queries”… I will try to purpose one session in the next event... maybe about my master BI dissertation.

Rafal Lukawiecki

Microsoft are hosting a one-day seminar presented by Rafal Lukawiecki for IT Managers and BI practitioners wanting to improve decision making and getting the valuable business insight by using Microsoft solutions at the Microsoft Offices in London and Lisbon. As I told before in this blog, Rafal is the best communicator of the world, if you are near Lisbon or London, you cannot miss it.

In Lisbon (Portugal), March 24th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402504&Culture=pt-PT

In London (UK), March 26th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032403569&Culture=en-GB

Regards,

Pedro

BI Education - Master's Degree Business Intelligence

I was contacted by dozens of people about information’s on Master's Degree in Business Intelligence and for that reason I share with you a research in this area. The world is currently in recession and nothing is more important to be on the top and improve each day your skills and keep in touch with new technologies and new concepts.

In my case, the master degree on BI started on September/07 changed my life and created a rhythm of work that I was not prepared before it. I’m now prepared to attack on several fronts: on my daily work and several projects in my free time (experts-Exchange, MSDN, my blog, and 2 other projects that I will share with you later)

Many of us are tools oriented but there’s nothing more important than understanding the theory and the work which is already done by others (because we don’t want to invent the wheel again). Everything that arises, arises from something and is where I focus my goals.

Samuel Quintanilla Galvez is from Peru, and he did a research about masters in Business Intelligence and decided to share it with us. We hope this information could be usefully for all who loves BI like me and Samuel.

Samuel on first person: “I did a research about BI and DWH courses too (courses not related to any particular tool or provider), courses that I could take from here, Peru. Some of them are in-classroom, but others are online, and could be very useful for you or maybe your friends. Attach the result of my research. I'll probably take the "Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Specialized Studies Program" in the University of California, Irvine

(http://unex.uci.edu/certificates/it/data_warehousing).

The program can be taken online or on campus, and cost $2,270. I think it's a very attractive program, but I might be wrong, that is why I'm looking for opinions from experts or from people with much more experience than me, before enroll to the program..."

Alex Whittles is currently attending the master BI degree at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), and I hope he could give us some feedback about. No Alex?! ehehe
For whom that wants to see the excel file (I don’t know how to attach here) please send me an email.
Regards,

Pedro

Data Mining and Neural Networks (NN)

Dear Friends,

This is my first post of 2009... happy new year!

I have been absent this month because I’m writing the second chapter of my master's thesis. Anyway, today I’ll write a bit of neural networks, which are on of the most important and useful Data Mining techniques.

But what is a neural network? A Neural Network (NN) is a system composed of many simple processing elements operating in parallel which can acquire, store, and utilize experiential knowledge. As I told you before, I’m very fascinated with Data Mining and the intelligence we can get from it. You can use it in Financial Markets (is the theme of my master dissertation), on insurance, or medicine, on retail, on all activities!!! The topics below explain better where you can apply NN, the learning methods, types and an Arquitecture that a NN could has.

NN Applications
-Classification
-Clustering
-Function approximation
-Prediction

NN Type
- Static (feed forward)
- Dynamic / Back-Propagation (feedback)

NN Arquitecture
- Single layer
- Multilayer
- Recurrent
- Self-organized

NN Learning Methods
- Supervised (network has inputs and their corresponding outputs)
- Unsupervised

In Data Mining classes directed by Professor Dr. Duarte Trigueiros, I did a practical excel exercise (homework) in order to better understand NN functionalities. I’ll share it with you today and feel free to contact me to get a copy of excel file. The excel files has the formulas behind and could be interesting if you think to improve your knowledge on this.


Initially, weights are random and the output of neural network will be compared to desired output. If same, reinforce patterns and if different, NN will adjust weights.

The dataset should be divided for training and testing, which in this case, because the NN is a supervised with back-propagation, the training dataset has the output classified and a better model will be created. After the model is created, the test dataset is considered as the input and the model could be evaluated.
Regards,
Pedro

Hotel Atlantis The Palm, Dubai Holidays

After almost two months, I finally have time to describe my holidays in Dubai and in one of the better hotels in the world, Atlantis the palm ... I was staying in this hotel before the official opening, and I must tell you that is really a dream while a little illusion. Check the video of the grand opening at the official website:

Dubai is one of the seven United Arab Emirates and is investing heavily in tourism since it is expected that the main source of wealth, oil, runs out in about 5 years ... Everything that is done in Dubai is done to be always the best in the world ... the world's tallest building, the largest artificial island in the world, the best hotel in the world, the best instance of SKI of the world ... everything! They are building the world map in the islands where the connection to earth will be made only by boat, airplane or helicopter. And it is no coincidence ... because in this way is to boost the aviation industry and boating industry ... because as you can see below, the cars industry in Dubai is well positioned...

Visit the website of company that is responsible for all this amazing constructions, which the owner is the shake, to better understand the greatness of what is being created. Where Vision Inspires Humanity http://www.nakheel.com/en

I will not comment further because the images speak for themselves.

The Atlantis by night

The Atlantis friends

The Atlantis from room

The Atlantis Room

The Atlantis Beach

The Atlantis Oceanarium

The Atlantis swiming pool

The Dubai Burj Al Arab

The other world in Dubai - The construction workers

The Ski Dubai
http://www.skidxb.com/

The Desert, the Safari and the Dinner


The Dubai Old Castle

The Dubai Cars

The Abu Dhabi

The Abu Dhabi Muslim Church

The Hotel also has Dolphin Bay, Aquaventure, Lost Chambers…
Today Tom Cruise reserved the entire Hotel for him and his friends to the new year party… uuaahh…

Happy new year!!!