I am passionate when it comes to analytics, data mining and machine learning and I think most organizations do too little when it comes to this arena. That's why one of my favorite parts of the Hadoop ecosystem is Mahout. Mahout is a scalable machine learning library that includes multiple out of the box machine learning and data mining algorithms including clustering, classification, collaborative filtering and frequent pattern mining. If you are using HDInsight in the cloud Mahout comes pre-in...
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It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to blog so when I decided to install HDInsight on a VM, I figured what better opportunity to get back in the swing of it. The Jumping Off Point To get things started, I am using VirtualBox as my VM host and I am running a fully patched (all 150+ of them) version of Windows Server 2008R2. Not that its relevant, but to be thorough, I've also installed SQL Server 2012 SP 1 as it will be used in subsequent blogs. A Tale of Two Installers Before we div...
Pragmatic Works hosts FREE live demos every Tues & Thurs @ 11 am EST. SQL Server, SharePoint, PowerPivot and Business Intelligence topics from Microsoft MVP's and industry experts. Join John Welch for Free Training on the T's. Unit testing is a widely accepted best practice, yet it is difficult to do well with SSIS packages. This session will focus on both the practice of test driven development as it applies to SSIS, and the tools for actually implementing it. It will cover in depth how to ...
I hope you were able to attend my free webinar on Introduction to Analysis Services on April 2, 2013. If you weren’t you can now download the recording here . Because I covered new material all the way to the end of the webinar i thought I'd also answer some of the top questions I didn’t have time to answer here. Q: Is it true that not all versions of Excel 2013 support PoverPivot. From what I read you need Office 2013 "Pro Plus". Here is a great post by Rob Collie that answers this ...
Join me tomorrow, April 2. 2013, at 11:00 PM EST for a free webinar which is part of an entire month of Back to Basics themed free training. This webinar is for anyone trying to understand the basics behind Analysis Services and how to get started design a cube. With the release of SQL Server 2012 there are now two forms of Analysis Services so we’ll also spend time discussing Multidimensional and Tabular and why you would choose one over the other. Also, during this webinar I reference a ...
SQL Server Analysis Services features nine different data mining algorithms that looks for specific types of patterns in trends in order to make predictions about your data. This is a potentially very powerful tool and since I've been learning more about data mining recently I figured I'd put together a little bit of information and research I've done on these algorithms for my own reference as well as for the benefit of others. Below you will see a list of the Data Mining Algorithms included in...
Typically, the data for an enterprise data warehouse does not arrive perfect. In fact, the data will come from many source and in many formats. One issue you will always have to contend with is missing values in the data. Task Factory from Pragmatic Works has a transform to help you deal with those missing values, the SSIS NULL Handler Transform . Recently, I decided to try out this transform to see just what it could do. I created a new 2012 SSIS package and added a connection manager to the pr...
When you set up AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG) you have the choice for each node, when in secondary mode, to be readable. In fact, you can specify that connections will be accepted by the secondary node only with a special connection string specifying that it intends to be read-only. This is a great feature for offloading any read-only workload onto the secondary. The figure shows the AG group configuration with the Readable Secondary options. “No” means that connections will be a...
It’s really interesting and exciting to see these kinds of new technology and tools by the Microsoft. It’s my great opportunity that I had a change to attend one of the first Asian Dev-Camps related to ‘Build apps for office and SharePoint’ in my own country Kathmandu, Nepal by a great Microsoft expert ‘ Glenn Morris’ Office and SharePoint Developer Camps are free, fun, no-fluff events for developers, by developers. You learn from experts in a low-key, interac...
Pragmatic Works hosts FREE live demos every Tues & Thurs @ 11 am EST. SQL Server, SharePoint, PowerPivot and Business Intelligence topics from Microsoft MVP's and industry experts. Join Melissa Coates for Free Training on the T's and support W.I.T. (Women in Technology). Would business users in your organization love to get their hands on an interactive, visually-oriented, data exploration tool? If so, Power View may be a useful addition to your BI environment to handle certain types of self...
Pragmatic Works hosts FREE live demos every Tues & Thurs @ 11 am EST. SQL Server, SharePoint, PowerPivot and Business Intelligence topics from Microsoft MVP's and industry experts. Join Julie Koesmarno for Free Training on the T's and support W.I.T. (Women in Technology). Ever wondered how to process millions of rows daily? Is partitioning the only solution? Fear not, SQL Server 2012 comes with new TSQL functions and index enhancement to help solve high volume data processing with techniques...
BI xPress Expression Highlighter Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BI xPress is Expression Highlighter. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. Now the Expression Highlighter, what that is going to do is show you any connection managers. Any connection managers, any variables that are using or evaluating expressions. And the way it does that is by putting a...
BI xPress Package Deployment Wizard Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BI xPress is the Package Deployment Wizard. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. So inside of BIDS right now, for 2005, and 2008 when you deploy packages, you’re kind of limited in what you can do with that, right? You know you have to do it either all the packages in your projec...
BI xPress Notification Framework Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Notification Framework. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. So lets say that you have a developer who deployed a package and something went wrong while it was executing on an agent job. So once the agent job is over you have to go and look through the agent job history an...
BI xPress Variable Dependency Scanner Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Variable Dependency Scanner. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. Say that we’re using a template package from somebody else that’s on our development team. Somebody else created this template. We also noticed there are a lot of variables and we don’...
BI xPress Quick Config Editor Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Quick Config Editor. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. Let’s say you have a package and are using config files.So what if we needed to make changes in those configuration files? Say that, you’ve gone through testing this package and everything is fine. Maybe yo...
BI xPress Monitoring Console Feature Overview 101 BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Monitoring Console, which is one of our most popular features. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. The SSIS Monitoring Console will display data that is recorded by the auditing framework. There are numerous reports that will display a variety of data, from real t...
BI xPress Package Builder Wizard Overview BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Package Builder. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. BIxPress can help you with rapid package development. You may have found yourself in situations especially if your loading to a data warehouse where you happen to create one package and then spend a lot of time on that ...
BI xPress Auditing Framework Feature Overview 101 BI xPress is one of our many software products here at Pragmatic Works. One of the features of BIxPress is the Auditing Framework, which is one of our most popular features. My goal is to introduce the feature, why it’s important and the benefits that can be gained by using it. For a lot of developers when they have errors or warnings inside of a package they spend a lot of time trying to going through the agent history to try to decipher w...
Service is King! As I was reading the book, “The Simple Truths of Service”, by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz I came across a lot of good reinforces for the service industry. Sure, some of the cliché and might not be mind blowing, however I think it’s always good to refresh and reinforce important ideas, especially to people who are working directly with clients. The book itself is very small, full of pictures and simply hits the main points of providing the best servic...
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Jon Gordon’s book and I thought I’d blog about the most recent one I read called, “The No Complaining Rule”, which in my view is one of his best books. The book paints a picture of a struggling company, whose share price is sinking, company morale is lackluster. This is a common theme throughout companies, many are struggling and the morale of employees is low. How does one turn itself around against the negativity that embedded fro...
Chief Energy Officer What does CEO stand for? Most of you would probably say the Chief Executive Officer, while a few of you might be thinking Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej, which is Polish for Center for Civic Education). I just recently finished reading a book called, “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon and he mentions how a leader must be a CEO, a Chief Energy Officer. What does he mean by that exactly? The main premise of the book is in order to run a successful organization you must...
Soup For You When anybody brings up the topic of soup, the first thought to my mind is the Seinfeld episode where the chef tells them, “No Soup for you”. But after reading the book entitled, “Soup” by the infamous Jon Gordon, the Seinfeld quote will be second to mind. The main concept the book illustrates is the, “Stirring of the pot phenomenon”, which states that no matter how carefully different chefs follow the same recipe, the final product always varies a...
I had been on the job only three weeks before I began work on my secret plans. It started out as just a simple BUS matrix; but, very quickly became a drill down BUS matrix of epic proportions. I knew from the onset if my schemas were ever to hit a database I would need to be clever, patient, and a maybe even a little cunning. I would have to keep my cards close to my chest, revealing my intentions only in bits and easily digestible bytes, sometimes as if they were not even of my own creation. Pr...
These days the fastest way, not always the most accurate, to get news is through social media. Technology, sports, politics, and breaking news will always be found first on social media outlets like Twitter. For example, I’m a huge fan of American Football or most known as the NFL. Every year the NFL teams draft players from college teams to play professionally. This is done through a big televised spectacle called the NFL Draft and is held across multiple days once a year generally in Apr...