HepburnData: Essential Complexity

Perspective is Everything: Why even the most intelligent software architects don't understand the Relational Model

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:25:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I stumbled on this article "A co-Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" ("coRel" hereon) in the on-line version of ACM Queue (this is the Association of Computing...

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Keys, Data Syncronization, and the Relational Model

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:36:00 +0000

A common problem faced by database developers involves keeping schemas and data in sync between environments. The problem isn't even restricted to development. Often databases must be kept...

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The Decline of Trust: Follow-up to Andrew Maguire post

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 16:16:00 +0000

Earlier this year I blogged about an alleged case of silver manipulation as raised by Andrew Maguire to the CFTC. If you haven't already, I urge you to read that post before continuing on with this...

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Twelve Reasons to use an ETL tool / Experience Report on ETL tools: Pentaho DI, SSIS, and PowerShell

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:15:00 +0000

Over the past couple months I've been jumping between three different ETL tools (well PowerShell is not exactly an ETL tool but has some overlapping functionality). The experience has given me new...

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The Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, and the Long Form Census Privacy Breech

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:43:00 +0000

"What do you think of the long form census" I ask inquisitively, adding "You know, the census form, which one out of every five persons needs to fill out. In order to provide information about...

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The Curious Case of Andrew Maguire / My challenge to serious journalists

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:47:00 +0000

In August 2008 economic world history was made, as a major world record was smashed. You probably never heard this news - even if you read the business section of a major newspaper, or work in the...

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What Does This Mean? Cost effective Metadata Management

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:58:00 +0000

It's been a long while since I've updated this blog. I've been very busy with a number of other projects. But with the wife and kids away this weekend I've found some time to get some ideas out that...

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Creative Destruction: Column based Data Warehouses. The next generation of data warehouse technologies has arrived.

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:21:00 +0000

I first heard about column-based data warehouses in the Feb. 25th print edition of Information Week. The article interviewed Michael Stonebraker (Stonebraker was one of the original architects of the...

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On a lighter note, how do we change the culture of software development

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:03:00 +0000

I just noticed this ad on the back of a recent print edition of Information Week. I'd seen these ads before (mainly on CNET's web site), but not in print form in a magazine geared towards data...

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Unstructured Data and the Hunt for the Elusive Customer Service KPI / Looking for Work

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:37:00 +0000

The culture of data and analytics is starting to take foot among the general population. Books like "Competing on Analytics" and "Supercrunchers" herald a new era of business whereby every little...

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David Letterman can teach us a thing or two about BI

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:50:00 +0000

I've been working a lot these days with data visualizations and presentation reports. I must admit that I've learned a thing or two about how people approach data, both from the IT side and the...

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The Secret... to Getting Things Done... in Data Management, for Dummies and Idiots... in Three Simple Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:34:00 +0000

I've decided to hop on the dumbing down bandwagon for once. But instead of just offering your typically mind-numbing advice, and providing a bunch of pointless examples to prove my point. I'm going...

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Social Networks for the Enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:47:00 +0000

I've been meaning to put this entry down for weeks now, but in each passing week it seems I come to new realizations about social networks and the direction they are going. It's been about two weeks...

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SOA without IT governance = good luck

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:08:00 +0000

Before getting into my post, I wanted to mention an interview I read in this month's Wired with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. I want to share with you a small excerpt: Wired: Google’s revenue and...

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Why basic IT services must be commoditized before we move to the next level

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 01:41:00 +0000

I recently got an e-mail from Gord, a former colleague who just came back from a job interview. Gord was lamenting the fact that in spite of all the talk surrounding data stewardship, metadata, and...

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Rebooting Repositories: Are Wikis more viable for Metadata, CMDB, Document Management, and other forms of Enterprise Repositories?

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:14:00 +0000

I have been grappling with the general problem of knowledge repositories. It’s been driving me nuts. While metadata repositories have been around for a while, new breeds of repositories are...

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Implementing Data Governance

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:22:00 +0000

If you’ve every purchased a home, (or prepared a Last Will and Testament, negotiated a severance package, or gone through a divorce), it’s likely that you have hired a lawyer to guide you through the...

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Rationale for Data Governance

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:19:00 +0000

When you think of Canada’s infrastructure you probably think of physical things like: highways; railways; copper, fibre optic, and coaxial communications lines; gas lines, electrical lines, and power...

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Metadata Defined

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:56:00 +0000

Regardless of whether you work in IT or some other department, if you are part of a large organization or enterprise (and sometimes even if you're not), Metadata is rapidly gaining much needed...

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Measuring the Business Rules Approach

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:39:00 +0000

My last blog entry “Business Rules Approach” was eloquently critiqued by a fellow Business Rules blogger (someone I might add who appears to hold a good deal of expertise in the area of the Business...

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Business Rules Approach

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:38:00 +0000

If you’ve worked in a corporate IT environment for more than year, either as a Business Analyst, a Developer, an Architect, in Quality Assurance, or in Application Support, you’re probably familiar...

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First Post: Essential Complexity

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Hepburn) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:56:00 +0000

What is meant by Essential Complexity? I have borrowed the term Essential Complexity from a famous essay written by Fred Brooks written in 1986 called "No Silver Bullet". In the essay, Brooks argues...

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