Jen Stirrup's Business Intelligence Blog

PowerPivot error: unable to upgrade the Data Model in this workbook

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sat, 11 May 2013 15:46:00 +0000

Upon opening a PowerPivot in Excel 2013 workbook, I get the following message:

unable to upgrade the Data Model in this workbook. The error occurred while upgrading PowerPivot workbook. The data model has reverted to the previous version

The PowerPivot model was created in Excel 2013. The machine is 64-bit and the model was created here and hasn't been moved.
It was working fine yesterday, and the only real change was the addition of a password in order to secure the file.

The error message in details is here:

============================
Error Message:
============================

Element not found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8002802B (TYPE_E_ELEMENTNOTFOUND))

============================
Call Stack:
============================

at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.INativeEntryPoint.BeginUpgradeASPPModel(String workbookName)
at Microsoft.Office.PowerPivot.ExcelAddIn.InProcServer.LoadSandboxAfterConnection(String errorCache)

============================

Resolution

I resolved this issue by:
running the 'PowerPivot in Sharepoint 2013 Configuration'.
I also removed the password from the file. To move it around, I will have to use other methods of encrypting the file. For customer data, I use diskGenie iStorage portable encrypted hard drives and USBs, rather than the plethora of USBs I tend to pick up for free from events.

After running the Wizard and removing the password, I could open up the PowerPivot model just fine.

Hope that helps.

An apology...

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:21:00 +0000

As some of you may know, I've been presenting in six different countries over the last month: Ireland, Norway, the United States, the UK, Denmark and Switzerland. A lot of this has been community work, for example, SQLBits, Database Days, SQLSaturday Denmark, SQLZaterdag in the Netherlands, and also the Norway LEAP architect program.

Along the way, I've collected a lot of requests from help for people for more information, slides, book references, help with technical issues - basically, I have a ton of questions from people, a pile of business cards from people who want more information, and hundreds of email to answer.

Whilst I work my way through this, I would ask for your patience with me. I am drowning in requests from people from six different countries (not including the questions I normally get) and I am slowly working my way through them. I will get to your question eventually, but I'd be grateful for your patience whilst I get through them.

I am grateful for all the people who have attended my events, and it's clear that many people have a passion for business intelligence and data visualisation. Thank you to everyone who attended - and if you did ask me for something, I'd like to ask for some patience from you whilst I work my way through everything. I will get to you, in due course.

In the meantime, I am very sorry that I can't help everyone as quickly as I'd like.

Why don't I simply post my slides up here? Simple. Unfortunately I've found that there has been some folks 're-using' my stuff, reblogging it without crediting me, and so on. It's a real pity but unfortunately I've had to resort to issuing PDFs 'on request' only.

I am very sad about it, but it's been extremely disappointing to see my stuff copied and pasted and working its way around the place. I cannot find a happy medium, and I'm open to ideas if anyone has other suggestions.

Onwards and forwards!

Announcing DiTBits at SQLBits

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:56:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce our inaugural DiTBiTs Cheese and Wine event at SQLBits XI on Friday 3rd May at 5pm in Room 1. The DiTBits site is here, and this is a cross-post.

Our topic is as follows: Networking in IT. Can more diverse networks provide better networks?
Is business networking useful in our careers?
How much has networking helped you in your career?
How can you build good social media profiles – or are these even necessary?

Attendees can enjoy Cheese and Wine refreshments whilst during the Panel discussion and interaction. Then, we’ll have a Flashmob Speed Networking at the end, just to tie things together before everyone shoots off for the party – so bring your business cards!

We are pleased to welcome our following panellists:

Denise McInerney is joining us from the United States, so please be sure to give Denise a hearty SQLBits welcome! Denise McInerney is a DBA-turned-Data-Analyst. She lives in Silicon Valley where she is employed by the software company Intuit. Denise founded the PASS Women in Technology chapter and currently serves as a member of the PASS Board of Directors. She is a Microsoft MVP.

Mark Broadbent is well known within the UK and across the world as a dedicated PASS ‘Outstanding Volunteer’ award winner and UK Regional Mentor. He is a SQL Server specialist and speaker focusing on HADR & upgrade solutions and in 2011 was awarded Microsoft’s Community Contributor award and in 2012 received the PASS Outstanding Volunteer award. He is the proud host of the first UK SQLSaturday, and is hosting another SQLSaturday event in Cambridge later this year.

Stephanie Locke works primarily in the BI space as a Senior Analyst responsible for delivering high profile projects and educating & mentoring others. She coordinates the local user group for SQL Server and tries to help grow the community.

The host for the inaugural DiTBits event is Jen Stirrup, a SQL Server MVP who best-known for her work in Business Intelligence and Data Visualisation. She is the current holder of the SQLPassion Award, presented by PASS at Summit 2012, for her work in helping the European SQL Server community. Jen has presented at TechEd North America, TechEd Europe, SQLPass and SQLBits and is the proud host of SQLSaturday Edinburgh.
If you have any questions, please get in touch with Jen.Stirrup@copperblueconsulting.com or feel free to browse around our site.
Who are DiTBIts? Take a look here.

PASS BA Conference: Interview with the PASS Board

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:51:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to interview Bill Graziano and Douglas McDowell, members of the PASS Board in order to have a chat with them about the PASS BA Conference. I've detailed the conversation here. I'd like to say a big 'Thank You' to Bill and Douglas, and the rest of the PASS team who took time out of their day in order to spend time with myself and the other bloggers.

Before we proceed, I'm British and spell organisation with an 's' rather than a 'z' - a number of the PASS BA Conference attendees came up to speak with me about my British spelling in my presentations, and it really made me smile! Therefore, this blog will continue my tradition of British spellings!

What was the purpose of the PASS Business Analytics conference?

The conference is aimed at the Business Analysts who want to be leaders in their discipline. Business Analysts, like the rest of the data community, are people to feel included as part of a community. If you touch data, you should be here! 62% of attendees have never been to a PASS event before - this is an awesome achievement for PASS towards building a new community of Business Analysts.

PASS is responding to a need in the Business Analytics community for knowledge, support, networking and training. Although PASS facilitate community events such as SQLSaturday events and so on, the content is determined by the community - in other words, what do people want to see? There is a real thirst for people to have Business Analytics information and a community, and PASS is meeting that demand.

What will people take away from the PASS BA Conference?

Knowledge of new technologies as well as discussions of business strategy. There are also plenty of case studies in specific domains, such as social media data analysis and even sports data analysis!

One interesting thing that was noted during the discussion was the sheer breadth of conversations that were held at the PASS BA Conference. It seemed a broad mix of IT and Business oriented people, and it was great to hear people sharing insights about what would be useful to them. Often it can be difficult for the IT folks to understand what the Business folks are doing and why - and vice versa. It seemed as if the 'sidebar' conversations went mainstream; one common theme was the difficulties in intra-organisational communication between technical and business departments. One of the interesting things for me is that some of the attendees seemed to take away more than knowledge; they took away a multi-faceted perspective of looking at the same 'business' problem with different eyes.

So, what was the audience profile of people attending a BA conference? The majority of 'job roles' were 'Business Analysts', who constituted 40% of the audience. These people were business-oriented in a LOB role.

The Business Analyst role constitutes a variety of roles, and it can be target a breadth of roles that's pertinent to Business Analytics. So, what is Business Analytics?

It means different things to different people. Positioning it was quite hard.

How do you concisely package it? If we look at Gartner continuum, we can see that Business Intelligence is diagnostic, and answers the question 'what happened'? Business Analytics, on the other hand, is prescriptive. It asks the question 'What do I need to do in order to effect an organisational change?'

Why did you choose the name 'Business Analytics'?

Future messaging of the PASS BA Conference will get tighter, but it is difficult to pin down when there are so many buzzwords! Business Analytics as a term, however, is durable - it's about adding value to your data. As technologies move and shift, the topic mix will change over time.

How can people continue to engage once the PASS BA Conference is over?

Given that 500 people were completely new to PASS as an organisation, there are plenty of opportunities for people to start up their own User Group, for example. Hopefully you'll see a BA user group starting near you! There will be separate needs for different parts of the community, and it is natural that this will evolve over time.

Virtual chapters can be one way to engage, and I'd personally encourage people to join up.

PASSBAC keynote: The Microsoft data story, and the next chapters

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:42:00 +0000

I attended the keynote from the PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, April 2013. For those of you who missed it, here is some of the content of the keynote.

The take away point is that Business Intelligence must be simple. It is important to make it fun, and we are drowning in data. Not being able to read and understand data, is like being disadvantaged in today's world. We have to move beyond what we now think about Business Intelligence. We have to get inside our data.

The keynote was opened by Bill Graziano ( twitter ¦ website ) who underlined the importance for a need amongst Business Analytics professionals for knowledge and support. PASS is helping to formulate a community of Data Professionals. If you're a Business Analytics professional, you can be a part of the shaping of this community and be a part in it. If this interests you, could can take a look at joining up a Virtual Chapter and receive monthly webcasts, for example. This can help you to stay connected once PASSBAC is finished.

Next, we had Dell appearing. They have over 15 years of IM software experience.

Dell has over 15 years of IM software experience, after their purchase of @Quest, for example. Dell constantly monitor their own brand in social media. For example, they have 6 years experience in watching their brand online, and anticipating with customers from a support and brand engagement perspective. They made the following observations in the social media market:

Dell's Observations

Data Type Proliferation

Vendor Proliferation

Data-Location proliferation

IT and LOB challenges

Snap into existing environments

Given these observations, they then moved to address these points in the market:

Analysis of social media needed to be:

Data-Type Agnostic

Vendor Agnostic

Data-Location Agnostic

Open

Capability needs to be at the tools layer

The takeaway point from the Dell part of the keynote is: Make the hard things simple to allow for more collaboration, exploration, analysis and communication

The final part of the keynote was presented by Amir Netz, who is a Distinguished Technical Fellow at Microsoft. The few times I've been lucky enough to speak with Amir in person, I've found him to be a very approachable and fun guy, and this came across clearly in the keynote, which was probably the most engaging I've seen (and I see a lot!) Netz was accompanied by Kamil Hathi who knows his stuff inside out and is a 'go to' expert for Analysis Services. I was really excited about this keynote since, whilst individually they are both excellent speakers, the idea of a joint presentation sounded fun and informative. They started off by emphasising how 'simple' attracts people. The strategy is to go back to Excel, thereby capturing the simplicity once again.

How can we make the spreadsheet really interesting again? Well, we can add in lots of unstructured data! To do this, we can use Hadoop, which is a file system, essentially a shoebox of unstructured data. A lot of data, all different kinds! Using Hadoop, you can easily transform the unstructured data. Structure on extraction, rather than a structured data model before extraction. Therefore, you're not imposing a structure on data that the ETL meets via the load; you're structuring the data once it is in Hadoop.

The team then did a great demo of PowerView using data from a dataset of music and songs. We learned that Mariah Carey has had more weeks in the charts than luminaries such as Elvis, the Beatles and U2.

This showed the power of the interaction of the data. In Amir's example, the kids had fun learning about their music idols. This was easily demonstrated in the keynote audience, who were cheerfully shouting out band names. We heard all sorts of names being shouted out: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Madonna and even Milli Vanilli!

Power View is all about sharing information, and having fun with the data.

Business Intelligence is elective - nobody forces an organisation to use Business Intelligence. It is about time management, and how much time people spend on Business Intelligence.

However, business intelligence can be fun can help you to get the ROI because it means that people will use it, and learn from it. Fun is important, and success is infectious.

It has to be more than fun, but it is a good starting place. We can use it to start more investigations, and then lead to deeper questions.

The team then did a deeper exploration using Power View for sentiment analysis with Twitter data. Sentiment used as a means of prediction of outcomes. If you'd like to know more about this, I've written a two part MSDN article on the topic.

The most exciting part was the announcement of Codename Geoflow, which allows you to do location sensitive content to your data. In other words, it allows you to create 3D data visualisations based on maps. You have to see it to believe it, and if you're looking for #Geoflow information, here you are http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2013/04/11/day-2-pass-business-analytics-conference-new-3d-mapping-analytics-tool-for-excel.aspx … #PASSBAC #SQLBits #SQLPass #SQLFAQ

Amir did a great demo to show the changes in the 'music chart songs' data over time and over place. It is a wonderful story, brought to life by #Geoflow. it also looked great on the huge 81 inch touchscreen, and its a great way to drive visualisations of data. At the PASS BA Conference, we will be lucky enough to have the Microsoft Experience lounge, where we can go and try all of this gadgetry out! Like Amir says, it has to be fun too.

We don't just think about business. Business Intelligence could also be called basic intelligence, but to achieve it, we need to get inside our data and let people work with it in familiar tools.

This is the Microsoft story, and I'm excited to see the next chapter for our business users.

Getting ready for PASS BA Analytics fun!

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:26:00 +0000

Have you got your Guidebook for the PASS BA Conference yet? Download the PASS BA Conference Mobile Program Guide to get up-to-date program details, maps, special events information, and last-minute updates on your phone or mobile device. Click here to download the free Guidebook app or get instructions on how to view it from your mobile browser. I've downloaded mine, and bookmarked the sessions which I'm attending.

My session are as follows so I hope to see you there!

Breakout Session (60 minutes):

Mobile Business Intelligence, Apprentice Style! (Information Delivery and Collaboration) on Thursday at 1.30 in room Sheraton 1

Data Visualization with Power View and the Tabular Model (Advanced Analytics and Insights) on Friday at 10am in room Chicago 10

My Friday session is straight after Dr. Steven Levitt's Keynote speech, which is in the Ballroom on Level 4 on Friday at 8am. You'll know Freakonomics, which Dr Levitt co-authored. Now he is going to be a really tough act to follow, but I hope you will enjoy my session all the same!

SQLSentry Sponsored Breakfast

On Thursday 7am - 7.45am, I'm pleased to be participating in a panel discussion, with a hot breakfast kindly supplied by SQL Sentry. We will be talking Operational Excellence for the Business Intelligence Professional, and it will be a great discussion. I hope to see you there!

What will we be talking about? Here are some thoughts: How do the most difficult BI projects meet tight deadlines, stringent requirements, and tough budgets? What do the most effective BI and BA teams do differently to ensure that their projects are a success and that their operations run smoothly? When do the leaders of BI and BA teams choose political interactions instead of technological interactions to ensure that they are successful?

Moderated by former PASS President, Kevin Kline, and featuring a panel composed of the industry’s top BI experts, you’ll find out the answer to all of these questions and more by joining us for this all-discussion panel, of which I'm honoured to be a part. See you there!

Up and coming PASS BA Sessions, and Data Visualisation and Microsoft Workshops

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:28:00 +0000

If you're here looking for precon notes, I will be posting these up in the next few weeks after I've finished my precons at SQLSaturday Denmark, Databasedays Switzerland and SQLBits in Nottingham, UK. So please keep checking back, or email me at jen.stirrup@copperblueconsulting.com

I'm delighted and proud to be presenting at the PASS Business Analytics Conference this week, in Chicago, Illinios, on 11th and 12th April.

I love SQLPass Summit, and it is one of the highlights of my year. The Business Analytics conference is happening for the first time, and I can't wait to meet the new #SQLFamily - or should that be #PASSBAFamily - that I will meet! I'm already making arrangements to meet fellow BA and Twitterati 'in person', which is one of my personal favourite things to do! See you there!

I'm pleased and proud to be presenting a preconference training in the Denmark in April 19th at the Microsoft Offices in Hellerup, Denmark, and a workshop in Pfaffikon, Switzerland.

With respect to Denmark, in case you're not familiar, SQLSaturday events are often accompanied by one-day, very reasonably priced community training days. This means that attendees get a deep-dive training day on a specialised subject on the Friday Preconference training day, as well as being able to attend the range of sessions on the main SQLSaturday event.

The precon I'm delivering is an in-depth day, which is aimed at Business Intelligence specialists who focus on front-end reporting. We will be looking at some of the 'new toys' in the SQL Server 2012 toolbox, as well as having a fresh look at old favourites such as SQL Server Reporting Services.

Our data source is the Tabular Model. I'm seeing more traction of the Tabular model at customer sites, but not everyone has had the chance to play with it yet. Therefore, I thought it worthwhile to use the Tabular model as a data source, in order to expose its usefulness to a wider audience.

To register for the Denmark event, please click here.

I'm holding a Data Visualisation workshop in Switzerland on 17th April.

If you want to conduct advanced, business-oriented Business Intelligence analysis in SQL Server 2012, then it is essential to understand data visualisation. This session is aimed at developers who want to make informed data visualisation decisions about reporting, with supporting cognitive psychology theory where relevant.
The takeaways will focus on:

Introduction: Finding patterns in the data.
Further Data Visualisations: learn about visualisations that are perhaps not so well-known. This includes Stephen Few's bullet charts and Tufte's Sparklines in SSRS.
Multivariate data: We will cover the complexities of displaying multivariate data since is potentially more complex by visualisations. For example, we will look at Tufte's "small multiples" in Power View and in Reporting Services.
Putting it all together: Considerations for Dashboards. This workshop aims to deliver a breadth of data visualisation knowledge, underpinned by cognitive psychology theory to provide deeper understanding.

To register for DatabaseDays, please go to http://www.databasedays.com/:

Last but not least, I'm holding a preconference training day at SQLBits in Nottingham, United Kingdom, on Thursday 2nd May. SQLBits is one of my favourite events, and I'm very glad to be going back to my roots after having been far travelled this year so far!

If you'd like to register for the SQLBits precon, the Training Day link is here. I hope to see you there!

Power View error: There are no addresses available for this application

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:11:00 +0000

Whilst doing a demo, I noted that running Power View on SharePoint gave the following error message:

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPEndpointAddressNotFoundException: There are no addresses available for this application.

There are two steps to resolving this issue:

1. Using the Central Admin on Sharepoint, check the services running on the server.

Go to Central Admin > Application Management > Manage Services on Server

Check if your services have stopped, particularly the 'SQL Server Reporting Services Service'. Also, take a look at the 'Managed Metadata' or 'User Profile' services.

2. Once you've reviewed the services, you might need to do perform an IISReset command

I hope that helps!

Mobile Business Intelligence Presentation Portugal 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 23:49:00 +0000

I gave this presentation at SQLSaturday event in Portugal during March 2013. Thanks to the organisers for taking such good care of me during my visit.

As I discussed during the session, there were three main strands of mobilising Microsoft technology:

- use third party products such as PivotStream to free your PowerPivots
- use cloud computing e.g. Azure
- use SharePoint

These options will not suit everyone but it might help somebody to decide which path is the right one for them. I look forward to your commentary and feedback.

Microsoft mobile business intelligence SQLPass from Jennifer Stirrup

Be the difference: the Adria Richards situation

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:28:00 +0000

Here's a summary of my thoughts on the Adria Richards situation, as a female in tech. For those of you who aren't on Twitter, here is a summary:

Adria Richards was an attendee at PyCon. Richards overheard a conversation by two men, which included a number of technical terms, which Richards took to infer some innuendo.
Richards posted their picture on Twitter to her thousands of followers whilst asking Pycon to remedy the situation.
Richards was then subjected to a lot of twitter support; but also the subject of a great deal of vitriol. Most of it is too disgusting to repeat here, but I got some of it a whilst back when I complained about the experiences of girl gamers over Twitter. Trust me, it isn't nice.
Richards, and one of the developers in the photo above, got fired.

So, as a female in tech, here are my thoughts:

The guys were mildly in the wrong for their initial comments.

Richards was mildly in the wrong for the over-reaction.

Absolutely wrong - not mildly - is the sad fact that Richards has received a huge amount of revenge via social media. Vitriolic commentary about rape, being killed, and even tweets showing pictures of decapitation and so on and so on. The kind of vile stuff you see on the Internet. However, if you use social media, you need to recognise that it may not always like you and this is a consequence that nobody could have foreseen.

Richards has the right to be offended; absolutely. I personally would have been dismissive of such juvenile commentary, and perhaps rolled my eyes at them. I don't think either party could have foreseen the circumstances. Richards and the developer fired, for example, and the internet furore and backlash that has ensued.

In my opinion, the 'dongle' jokes were juvenile and silly, and they were thoughtless. However I do think that Richards should have had a quiet word with them, either immediately or at a later point. A simple 'Guys, I'm not comfortable with that.... can you keep that until later?' would probably have sufficed. This would have been a mature, simple route for anybody; male or female. If she didn't feel comfortable doing that, then she could have asked others sitting around her for their thoughts and opinions. A simple sentence, signifying maturity, would have permitted the guys to apologise and amend their behaviour; if they didn't, then she'd have a clearer case for justifying her Twitter response and 'outing' of these developers.

Why it is difficult for me personally:

I think that the initial over-reaction has a 'halo' effect; I don't want 'men in tech' to think that we are all Richards in disguise. I don't want to be treated differently because I'm female. I want to be treated the same. I don't want guys to feel that they are treading on eggshells around me. I can carry out my professional work much more easily when people get past the 'girl' thing.

This whole, sorry, wrong situation is a setback for everyone; men and women in tech. For example, I am worried that it may scare companies from hiring women, thinking that we will go off on some Twitter strop at the slightest provocation. That's exactly the sort of situation that we do not want. I want to be seen as a professional; someone you'd hire and trust to deliver a good job, not someone you'd be afraid to interact with in case of a Twitter furore.

How do you get a balance, then? I do think that people should behave professionally; my code is to behave as if the CEO was sat next to you. Would you swear? Make juvenile jokes? Probably not. I'd expect the same professionalism from others, regardless of their sex. Incidentally, the developer in question has made an apology, and it would be nice if it was accepted graciously.

People need to wake up and realise that we are in tech, not saving babies or curing cancer, and apply our energies and brains to things that will really change the world. Like behaving as if we are adults. Like giving women the same opportunities as men. Like the risks to young women in various parts of the world, when they try to get an education - think of Malala, for example, at school near me. Like us women not shooting ourselves in the foot. Like trying to find the 'mature' route to set an example to the 'brogrammers' who are in the majority in our industry.

I really hope that this situation resolves itself as well as possible, for the developers and for Richards herself. That we all mature because of this situation.

Be the difference.

Everything as a Service, whether you know it or not!

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:49:00 +0000

I've reposted this infographic from the Engine Yard. I often give presentations where I can see that there is some resistance to cloud. This resistance has a variety of roots, and here are some common themes that I encounter:

my boss will never put anything in the cloud
our data is too sensitive to put into the cloud
we can't work out how much it will cost in advance

With respect to the first item, this is a trust issue. It is like a vicious cycle; they don't try, so they don't trust, so they don't try.... and so on. However, people use the cloud all the time. They might not know that it's the cloud, but it is there!

I've reposted this infographic here in order to show people that they are constantly using the cloud, whether they realise it or not. If it doesn't appear properly, click here to go to the original.

Enjoy!

https://s3.amazonaws.com/engineyard.com/infographics/en_images/6/original.jpg?1363154282

Courtesy of: Engine Yard

The Progress of Mobile Business Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 22:57:00 +0000

This Infographic from Domo in 2011 tells a story about the ROI of mobile business intelligence. I've enclosed it as-is. It reflects the fact that I'm always being asked, at the start of any Business Intelligence project, whether the data can be mobilised.

The optimism of the infographic is interesting, since the figures shown below should be borne out by the time of writing this blog, which is March 2013.

In order to get a better idea of mobile Business Intelligence adoption, I suggest that you look at Howard Dresner's Mobile Business Intelligence Survey, which he conducts on a yearly basis. To summarise, despite the earlier optimism of the original infographic, penetration of mobile BI today is modest, with majority of organizations report that fewer than 10 percent of users have access. As you might expect, smaller organisations have higher adoption of the new technology, with 20 percent of small business participants report that their mobile BI penetration is 81 percent or higher. So penetration in the small organizations is significant today. The take-away point is that there is a disparity between ambition and reality, where businesses are concerned.

Dresner's research makes a calmer estimate: half of even the largest of organizations will be in the 11–20 percent band of using mobile Business Intelligence by 2015. There is a great deal of enthusiasm for mobile projects. In my experience, people can get distracted by the shiny-shiny new devices or applications, but forget that they still require clean, tidy data. Putting bad data on a mobile device doesn't make it any better, and this is a key point which the whole mobile Business Intelligence discussion seems to miss.

In other words, on twitter, I'd like to see the hashtags #CleanData and #RightData used just as much, if not more, than the hashtags #BigData and #MobileBI, which are fairly ubiquitous where Twitter is concerned. These problems are less fun, and are often hard to do, which explains why they are much less popular than projects which involve shiny gadgetry.

My 10 years with SharePoint from the SQL Server perspective; the story so far.

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

I've been working with SharePoint since SharePoint Server 2003. It's been ten years since my boss, on his last day working beside me as a consultant for Dimension Data, ran past me saying "I've made you SharePoint administrator, you'll love it" as he ran out of the door. I yelled back "What's SharePoint?" and he gave me a cheeky grin and said "you'll thank me, you'll love it." I never saw him again.

Over the ten years now, there have been times where I have wanted to do anything except thank him for inheriting SharePoint. There are other times where I've been the sole voice, evangelising its usage within an organisation. Ultimately, yes, I do want to thank him!

I'm amazed by how SharePoint has evolved over the years. The central tenet is the same; sharing information, regardless of the format. I'm glad that there is a move towards collaborative sharing, working and business intelligence.

If there is anything I could change about SharePoint, it would be the following things:

I'd make sure that every SharePoint project included the business users and business sponsors, and not just technical resources. I'd want a diverse team, right at the top of my list.
I'd clarify the licensing.
I'd make it super-easy to jazz up a SharePoint website. If you want some really fancy SharePoint website, you have to know things like CSS. I'm not a web designer so I'm not going to go there.
SharePoint has a broad skill set of skills in setting it up; it's an architecture project, not just a Business Intelligence project. I'd like that message to get across.

Since SharePoint is delivered as a website, that makes it look deceptively easy. Don't be fooled. It's sharing information, so the information assets need to be secured and controlled as with other information stores. Over my ten years, I've struggled with security, identity delegation, and authentication. If you're thinking "well, that's easy" then you're blessed that you didn't see the earlier kerfuffle in trying to sort it out! So, I was very glad to see that Kay Unkroth and an amazing team of Technical Reviewers have put together a white paper entitled Microsoft BI Authentication and Identity Delegation

I come at SharePoint from a SQL Server angle; in other words, from the data up. I recommend this white paper since there is a lot here about connecting to various data sources, and the SQL Server expert will find this very useful. There's also references to custom user references. For the SQL Server Business Intelligence reader, there's a lot of information about enabling personal, team and enterprise Business Intelligence from the architecture perspective, and this will prove useful to you for your SharePoint 2013 projects.

I strongly recommend that you read this paper. Sometimes I think people assume Business Intelligence is just about pretty pictures (sigh). However, to make the reports, dashboards and so on happen in SharePoint, you're not waving a magic wand. Magic needs to happen under the hood. Unkroth's white paper will help to demystify the complexities for you. I really wish we'd had all this information earlier.

I've spent many nights working with SharePoint to make things happen for my Business Intelligence customers. However, it does seem to me that the thinking at Microsoft is becoming more 'joined up' and I'm glad to see a diverse range of technical authors who have helped to make this paper happen.

I love what I've seen SharePoint do for customers over the years, and I look forward to working with it for the next ten.

Data Visualisation: lifting the curse of Cassandra

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:12:00 +0000

Information is the new currency, the lifeblood of organisations. However, it has to be explored, and evangelised throughout the organisation before it can have any real impact. SQL Server 2012 now helps business users to access the data; a real paradigm shift in the 'umbrella' of users who touch SQL Server.

However, does that mean that the users will be believed? The 'messenger' of the information can have a great influence on how the information is - or is not - propagated throughout the organisation. Sometimes, people are simply not believed, or their ideas entertained. This may be due to the way that they put the message across, or simply due to the fact that they can't get the message to the right people without upsetting the apple cart.

This is about the person (or group) in the organisation, who might meet one of these criteria:

see a 'train crash' going to happen in the organisation, but can't should loudly enough to avert it happening.
see room for improvement in the business, but find it hard to get their message across
have a 'gut feel' about what customers are telling the enterprise, but find it hard to prove, demonstrate or research this 'gut feel'

This leads to the Cassandra Complex. Quick history lesson: according to Greek mythology, Cassandra was the beautiful daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. She refused the advances of Apollo, who set a curse on her: that she would always tell the truth, but never be believed.

There are parallels with this mythological figure in the workplace, which may engender your sympathy or empathy. You might see this in yourself or in someone else. Do you see the 'train crash' in the organisation before it happens, but can't get the message cross? Do you see patterns in the data, and find it hard to evangelise your findings throughout the organisation?

If so, you could be the 'Cassandra' in your organisation, or a customer or associated company, for example. It is tremendously frustrating to see issues in the organisation, but not get the message across. So, if you see someone banging their head against a wall, trying to show problems before they take hold: they do this because they care, but perhaps that isn't the best way to get the message across. It also helps business users to test out their theory by allowing the users to explore their findings properly, before publicising them.

A better way to get the message across is to research, demonstrate and uncover the findings in the data using data visualisation technology such as Power View, which can help. It is the new part of SQL Server 2012 which allows users to touch their data; it isn't just about techies any more. By showing the 'truth' of the data, hopefully this would cure the curse of Cassandra: to be heard and also to be believed. Visualising data can bring insights, and attention, into data that can show where the problems reside in the organisation.

Data Visualisation can help to make Cassandra speak - and be believed.

Sometimes people need to 'see' the problem before they understand it. Data Visualisation makes the insights accessible. It's harder to ignore Cassandra if the the message is shown inescapably to all, particularly when it's right in our favourite Office tools such as PowerPoint or Excel.

Making data insights accessible means that data visualisation are used to make analysing data simple, assuming the data is properly organized, cleansed and sanitised. The beauty of these solutions is that it's fast to get results, and easy to show them off. If you're interested in looking at data visualisation technology, then the Gartner Report is a good place to start. I tend to think that the technology should support the business requirements, within the budget set by the organisation for purchasing software. That's why it's difficult to recommend one over the other, since the answer is usually 'it depends'...

Whether or not the organisation works on the insights, of course, is never guaranteed. As always, life isn't that simple, but it's a new angle that might help push problems forward and turn them into solutions.

Women in Technology event at SQLSaturday Exeter

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:31:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that, on March 9^th, the SQLSaturday Exeter is having a ‘Women in Technology Unplugged’ session, in recognition of InternationalWomens’ Day. The session will be held over lunchtime and if you'd like to take a look at the agenda and register for the SQLSaturday event, please click here.

Our topic for discussion is ‘Networking for Techies’ and we’ll have an informal chat over coffee in the Community Corner. Come and join other interested people to build personal connections, and gain insights via our informative discussion. Attendees will share insights and experience, stimulate new ideas and have an engaging discussion! Topics include:

·        How to use LinkedIn?
·        Does ‘speed networking’ work?
·        How to network at technical events?
·        Ice-breakers?

If you’re interested in learning about how to network better, please join us for this facilitated discussion and find ways in which to move your career to the next stage.

This is a ‘Women in Technology’ session but ‘Men in Technology’ are very welcome, too!

We look forward to seeing you there.

If you are interested in other International Womens' Day events, please take a look at their site. There is a lot going on!

Business Intelligence and Power View: a Subtle Change or an Inflection Point?

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:32:00 +0000

Can organisations be brave enough use their data to get along the 'inflection point'? If so, how can they do it? Can Power View help?

Andrew Grove wrote a book Only the Paranoid Survive, which discusses how Intel survived change after change in the computing industry. Grove had a very interesting idea: businesses are affected by six forces, both internal and external:

- existing competition

- complementary businesses

- customers

- potential customers

- possibility of alternative ways of achieving the same end

- suppliers

Grove proposed that, if these forces stayed equivalent, that the company will steer a steady course.

However, what happens if any of the forces increase or decrease in terms of their pressure? Can this change turn into an inflection point? An inflection point is illustrated below, courtesy of Wolfram Mathworld.

In other words, the inflection point is where the curvature of a line goes from negative to positive.

Translated into business terms, this can be considered as part of a maturity process, whereby the immature company goes through a turbulent 'adolescence', to reach maturity.

If you've been part of this process, you'll recognise the signs. Team members who do not like change, for example, and are resistant to new ideas. Perhaps you see that your organisation is offering new products and services from the business perspective, but IT is simply not keeping up with the changes foisted on them. That's when silly mistakes can happen; for example, server failure since 'everybody' was too busy trying to paste over the cracks but didn't look at the fundamental issues because they were chasing their tails.

From a Business Intelligence perspective, I think it can be important to understand that Business Intelligence problems can actually be Change Management problems; they have to be understood as exposing less visible failures in the system. In other words, it isn't the SSRS report that's wrong; it's the failure of the processes that produce the report in the first place, so it no longer answers the 'business question'.

Essentially, the business has changed but isn't served any longer, by the supporting players.

How does the enterprise get upwards and onwards? There are whole books written on this issue, but one way to look at it is to move people away from 'gut feel' towards data-based analysis. This can be extremely hard to do. For some people, they will simply never listen to what the data is showing them. Perhaps they may even recognise that they aren't producing the 'supporting act' data in the first place, to move the business forward.

One way to engage people in data is to give them access to it, and Power View in Excel 2013 is an accessible way of doing just that. There is a lot of value in letting people 'see' the answers for themselves. There is danger too; they will soon see the 'failures' in the data - where it is poor, wrong, or just plain missing.

It's an adventure with data. It's up to the organisations themselves to see if can be brave enough use their data to get along the 'inflection point'. It might just be a subtle change for them; or it could open up the opportunity to allow people to see their data.

Power View is more than just pretty pictures because it can really mean engagement with the data, and encourage exploration to an Excel-oriented audience who didn't have the opportunity to visualise and play with their data in this way before.

Don't be fooled because it is in Excel - it can help your business users to ask new questions of their data. It's a change of thinking about data, putting it into the hands of business users who can change the organisation. Perhaps they will help organisations to move along the 'inflection point' towards maturity.

That's the real power of Power View.

Mobile Business Intelligence Slides from SQLServerDays, Belgium

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:13:00 +0000

Here's my Mobile Business Intelligence slides from my presentations at SQLServerDays in Belgium recently.

Mobile business intelligence upload from Jennifer Stirrup

Enjoy! Any questions, please do get in touch.

Visualising the Tabular Model in Power View

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:01:00 +0000

Here are my slides from my recent presentation at SQLServerDays in Belgium. I love this conference; the team do a great job of organising it, and they always make me feel genuinely welcome. If you get the chance to go along, I recommend you take the experience!

Here are my slides for you to view.

Visualising the tabular model for power view upload from Jennifer Stirrup

Enjoy!

IP address query selection for High Availability Listener

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:50:00 +0000

One of my customers contacted me; they had set up High Availability but had a concern. They couldn't ping all of the IP addresses associated with each of their listeners.

I gave it a go, and sure enough, I could see one of the IP addresses, but not the 'sleeping' one, which was on a different subnet. The listener had two IP addresses, one for each subnet.

Then it suddenly made sense that this is 'by design'. The IP addresses are not online at the same time, since the server can't host an IP address that's not in its subnet, so you can only have one ‘up’ at a time.

When the cluster group is owned by one of the nodes, one IP address is up. The other is down, sleeping but ‘healthy’. When the cluster group is owned by the other node, the original ‘sleeping’ IP Address is up, and the original IP address is down.

This was easy enough to show. I induced failover, and then bringing it back up again. It is possible to see the swapover of the IP addresses, and the original ‘awake’ IP address going offline whilst the other comes up.

It is still there; just not accessible since the server can’t host an IP address which is not part of its subnet.

Freakonomics author Steven Levitt is presenting Keynote at PASS Business Analytics Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:49:00 +0000

Fantastic news about the PASS BA Conference!

Award-winning economist and author Dr. Steven D. Levitt – co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics and its sequel SuperFreakonomics – will keynote at the inaugural PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, April 10-12.

Dr. Levitt will take the stage on Day 2 to share his passion for data and the stories it tells. If you'd like a flavour of his discussion, please take a look at on of his TED talks, which I've taken from the TED site for you to view, so please see below:

What is the 2-day PASS BA Conference? It is a conference, featuring 60+ sessions across 5 topic tracks – will bring together 1,200 business analysts, data scientists, architects, and business analytics/business intelligence practitioners to connect, share, and learn. I'm hugely proud that I'm speaking.

If you'd like a flavour of it, please join us for our 24 hours of PASS webinars. Held on 30th January, these webinars are not repeats or previews of the PASS BA sessions, but will give you an idea of the speakers and the broad brushstrokes of the Business Analysis oriented content.

I was massively excited about speaking at the PASS BA Conference, and this is just fantastic news - icing on the cake!

You can learn more about the PASS BA Conference at http://passbaconference.com

See you there!
Jen

Where the blazes is Nottingham? Travel to SQLBits for International Travellers

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:15:00 +0000

If you're thinking of coming to SQLBits from outside of the UK, what's the options available to you? Here is a summary of the sections in this page, and I hope you will find it useful. Any comments or questions, please leave a comment so I can add new detail, to benefit everyone.

What is Nottingham all about, then?
Travelling from the United States

Travelling from Manchester
Travelling from London Heathrow

How do you get from the centre of Nottingham to the East Midlands Conference Centre and Orchard Hotel?
Driving in the UK

What is Nottingham all about, then?

Well, it's the home of the Raleigh Chopper.
DH Lawrence was born near here. You may have read Lady Chatterley's Lover, which is a historical landmark in British legal history surrounding obscenity. In 1960, Penguin actually went to trial for publishing it. Penguin were found 'not guilty' due to the novels' literary merit. Take that, Fifty Shades of Grey!
King Charles I started the Civil War near here.His execution led to Interregnum, where England was a republic for a short time. Thought we always had a monarchy? Nope. Take a look at the official British Monarchy website for more information.
In 1607 the founding Pilgrim Fathers left Bassetlaw to start their new life in Holland. It was 13 years later - in 1620 - when the Pilgrims finally reached Plymouth, USA. Which segues us nicely into the section entitled:

Travelling from the United States

You can arrive from Manchester, or London airports. Manchester is about 70 miles away from Nottingham.
If you come into London, Heathrow is perhaps a better choice than Gatwick, since Gatwick is at the very south of London.

Travelling from Manchester

Manchester may be slightly cheaper than Heathrow. How do you get from Manchester Airport to Nottingham?

Service NX350 - National Express Coach - they operate buses from Manchester Airport. Some services go direct to Nottingham, other services require that you change at Leeds. Here is an example for Service NX350, which takes you from Manchester Airport to Nottingham. This is a long journey though - three hours minimum. Not what you want, if you've just had a 9 hour flight from the US. That said, Manchester is a great place to stop overnight if you want to see a different part of England.

National Rail might be a better option. It is quicker, at 2.5 hours to get from Manchester Airport to Nottingham. You can get a train from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly station, and then catch a train from Manchester Piccadilly to Nottingham.

Travelling from London Heathrow

Heathrow offers lots of options to get yourself to Nottingham.

Train from London Heathrow:

If you want to use the train, I think that going from:

London Heathrow to Paddington using the Heathrow Express, then...

Paddington to St Pancras then....

St Pancras direct to Nottingham, is probably the simplest. Other suggestions, please leave a comment.

The Heathrow Express takes you from the airport to Paddington Station.

You can then take an Underground tube from Paddington to London's St. Pancras station. Here is a map of the St. Pancras area so I'd suggest you take a look at it. Here are two routes, which take about 15 minutes. The reality is that both trains go from Platform 16, and follow the same route. Here is a tube map to help you to see what I mean.

From London Paddington, take the Circle Line (Eastbound, Platform 16) which is a direct service to Kings Cross St Pancras Underground Station
From London Paddington take the Hammersmith & City Line (Eastbound, Platform 16) which is a direct service to Kings Cross St Pancras Underground Station.

Once you get out of the tube station, you will see the magnificent St. Pancras station. St Pancras International was named after St Pancras Old Church. Dating back to 400 AD, it is believed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England. Just look for the clock, and you enter the station from the archway.

London's St. Pancras Station is a fantastic example of Victorian Gothic architecture. Here is the staircase, inside St. Pancras hotel.

It has Betjeman poetry engraved on the walls. Some of the train sheds were bombed during the Second World War, which has only been partially reglazed at the time of writing.

Once you get to St. Pancras, you can get your train to Nottingham. To book your tickets, go to the National Rail website.

How do you get from the centre of Nottingham to the East Midlands Conference Centre and Orchard Hotel?

The official EMCC website is here but they seem to advise getting a taxi. Here is the number of the EMCC to ask for a taxi, if you need one: 0844 346 1216

Driving in the UK

There are some nearly quarter of a million miles of roads in Britain. Many of the roads are built on the old roads laid down by the Romans centuries ago. Roads in Britain range from wide modern motorways down to narrow country lanes usually bordered by hedges, stone walls, grassy banks or ditches. Cities and towns tend to have narrow streets because they date back to well before cars were invented. A lot of towns, like my nearby St. Albans, date from Roman times and were not designed for today's traffic.

There are plenty of car hire places, but I'd suggest that you specify an automatic or you might get a manual / gear stick / gear shift or whatever you call them.

We also drive on the left hand side of the road in the UK. Why? Because it's the law.
Don't text / tweet / talk on the mobile (cell) whilst you drive.
Roundabouts - these are the most contentious for non-Brits. Here is what the British Government's 'Highway Code' has to say about the issue. It boils down to:

If there are two lanes: if you're turning right, go into the right lane. If you're turning left or straight ahead, use the left lane. This is the rule, unless the road markings say otherwise.
Always give way to the person coming from the right. He has priority over you. Let any traffic from your right, go first. Then you go. The people on your left hand side.... they're waiting for you.

Any questions, please leave a comment and I'll pick it up here, for everyone's benefit.

See you at SQLBits!

Jen x

Spanish Error when Installing SharePoint 2013 Server on a VM

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:11:00 +0000

I'm in the process of installing SharePoint Server 2013 on a VMWare machine, with Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1. After I've installed all the pre-requisites, I start to install the server itself. That's when I get a cute Spanish error message:

In case you need more detail, it says:

Error 1335. El archivo.CAV "Proof.CAB" que se necesita para esta
instalacon esta danado o no se puede usar. Esto puede indicar un error de
red, un error al leer desde el CD-ROM, o un problema con esta paquete.

Hopefully that's more 'search engine' friendly than the image.

I don't speak Spanish, but I can tell you that it simply means that the VM can't see your CD drive properly. Super easy to fix. All I did, was use the *.ISO file as the CD drive, and you can see how to do this in the image below:

Once you do this, you can proceed to install SharePoint 2013. Good luck!

PASS Business Analytics - what's so exciting about this new conference!

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:18:00 +0000

I'm delighted to announce that I'm speaking at the PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago, which takes place in April 2013. This conference is exciting since all about data, working with data, analysing it, strategy around data.... the types of discussions that will spark people who love data and analysing it, as I do!

If you work with data, and/or Excel and the other BI applications from Microsoft - this event is for you. We will be talking:

data discovery
data exploration and visualization
predictive analytics
big data
information architecture and delivery
collaboration
information strategies
Microsoft's collaborative business analytics platform

It sounds as if it is the event for people who love data and I cannot wait to meet these new community members.Over 1,200 business analysts, data scientists, architects, and BA/BI practitioners are expected to take part in the 2-day conference, and I think that the sessions, plus the company of other Business Analytics and data enthusiasts, will lead to a refreshing environment for learning and networking - and also having fun!

What will we be discussing?

sparks from the anvil - real-world insights
prescriptive guidance and best practices
strategic vision for successfully analyzing, managing, and sharing business information
and insights

For more information and to register, visit http://www.passbaconference.com. or follow on twitter at @PASSBAC and I look forward to seeing you there!

SQLSaturday Edinburgh Preconference Training Day sponsored by SQLSkills

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:39:00 +0000

The SQLSaturday Edinburgh team are extremely proud to present the following one day, advanced level training with SQLskills Jonathan Kehayias and Joseph Sack. The Training Day will be held on Friday 7th June at the University of Edinburgh Pollok Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland. You can find full details here, such as travel, accommodation and venue., and you can register here.

I'm very proud that Jon and Joe are joining us. They are extremely well-respected for their knowledge in SQL Server.

You may well have read their books or material. Jonathan is the 'go-to' expert and authority on Extended Events in SQL Server 2008— for example, he wrote the definitive whitepaper on Extended Events for Microsoft.

Joe is a SQL Server author, and you can see his Amazon page here. In 2009, Joe took over responsibility for the entire SQL Server Microsoft Certified Master program and held that post until 2011.

Jonathan and Joe are part of the highly-respected SQLskills team. We are also delighted to announce that SQLskills are our official Preconference Training Day Sponsor, and we are grateful to them for their fantastic support of SQLSaturday Edinburgh.

The SQLskills team are brought together by Paul S. Randall and Kimberly L Tripp, two of the world’s most renowned SQL Server experts, is dedicated to providing the highest quality and most in-depth training and consulting in the market. The SQLskills team have an emphasis on real-world expertise that you can immediately put into practice, making you a better SQL Server professional.

The Training Day itself has the following Agenda and you can register here.

Leveraging SQL Server 2012 Features and Tools

SQL Server 2012 offers a number of new features that improve high availability, security, performance analysis, and scalability that can be immediately leveraged for an immediate return on investment associated with upgrading. In this session, Joe and Jonathan will go through a huge list of problems solved by these new features and tools – and will demo them along the way!

Some of the new SQL Server 2012 features that will be discussed:

partitioning enhancements
ColumnStore indexes
contained databases
distributed replay
server-level roles
predictable failover with failover policies
availability groups
multi-database failover
read-only secondaries
and… much, much more!

If you want an information packed session with practical reasons to upgrade and powerful tips and tricks for using the new release – this workshop is for you!

Who are the presenters?

Jonathan Kehayias and Joseph Sack are well-known SQL Server experts, part of the elite SQLskills team of expert consultants.

What will you take away from the session?

By attending this session, you will obtain advanced SQL Server 2012 knowledge that will help you to conduct your upgrade more smoothly, whilst helping you to understand the new SQL Server 2012 features can help your environment.

SQLSaturday Edinburgh offer very reasonably priced sessions aimed at helping the SQL Server community. Given the low cost of £125 (exclusive of VAT) for this one-day training course, we believe that you will recoup this investment by delivering your upgrade with the expertise that you will gain from this session.

Three Presentations, Two Continents, One Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Jen Stirrup) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:17:00 +0000

I've just finished a Herculean effort for the community. I delivered two presentations at SQLLive360, Orlando, Florida... then stepped on a plane for a nine hour flight to London, to deliver a presentation on mobile Business Intelligence at a SQLSanta event that I helped to organise.

Why? Well, I'm not really sure, but I had a blast at both events.

SQLLive360 was an event which delivered four events in one location. Each event focused on SharePoint, Cloud, SQL Server and Visual Studio. The SQLLive360 team, which included my 'go-to' Big Data expert Andrew Brust, were incredibly helpful and worked very hard, and the event was a great success, judging from delegate comments. It was also great to see my SQLfamily: Tom LaRock, Allen White, Edwin Sarmiento, Grant Fritchey,William Pearson, Bradley Ball and finally, it was great to meet Lynn Langit at long last. Lynn's been an inspiration to me for a long time, and it was great to talk with her.

So, then, straight after the Mobile Business Intelligence presentation, it was a mad dash to a town car, which took me to Orlando Airport for a 9 hour flight back to London. Once I arrived at Gatwick, after having had two hours sleep on the plane, I drove my car from London Gatwick Airport to central London, and arrived in time to deliver my presentation for the SQLSanta event in the Microsoft offices in London. Much kudos must go to Dave Ballantyne, Tony Rogerson and Neil Hambly, my partners-in-crime for organising SQLSanta. It was a lot of fun!

In case you'd like a copy of the presentation, please find it below.

Enjoy!