Ross Goodman

I have just fine tuned my working environment and have come up with the ideal setup.

OK the monitor heights are a bit wonky but I very rarely span monitors, I like to have discrete items open in each and focus on one monitor at a time.

In this picture I have outlook split between monitors 1 & 2, thunderbird between 2 and 3 and firefox crossing all 3.

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photo credit: Felipe Morin

I am often asked by my colleagues to explain dimensional modelling concepts to them. I will try to capture come on the concepts here. I am going to focus on Facts.

Specifically, types of facts: Accumulating, Factless, Transactions, Snapshots, Additive, SemiAdditive and Non Additive

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I have just “finished?” my first twitterbot!

If you send it a direct message with part of the name of someone who works at Eclectic it will send you their contact details as a return direct message.

The API is very straight forward, only my lack of bash skills slowed me down.

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As I mentioned previously my company has been bought over. One of the immediate changes is that we are now responsible for booking our own travel and accomodation, rather than it being done centrally. Whilst this is a pain if you are busy, you can turn this to your own advantage.

This week i have “earned” £52.46 for doing my job !

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I really hate just regurgitating content from other sites but the following article just hit home, summarising what, in my opinion, sets us apart!
Read the article here.

VISTA is an acronym for value, integrity, service, trust, and accountability. These qualities are essential to extend beyond a simple provider-consumer relationship and to establish shared-value consulting relationships.

Value is fundamental to a successful consulting relationship. You must know and be able to articulate what value you will provide as a consultant or will expect a consultant to provide for your BI program. To achieve shared-value relationships, the inverse is also important: You must know and be able to articulate what value the consultant expects to receive. When value is described in measurable terms, it becomes possible to discuss and develop a consensus on value expectations.

Integrity is a cornerstone of good consulting practice. The best consultants operate based upon a code of ethics. As a provider of services, be prepared to state your code of ethics. As a consumer, be sure to ask about it. Key ethics considerations include confidentiality and nondisclosure. Also avoid conflict of interest; be (or hire) a consultant who is not influenced or biased by the possibility of work beyond the scope of the current engagement.

Service is the heart of successful consulting; it is a service business. Thus, consultants are service workers. An effective consultant is one who actively works to deliver real benefits to clients in a professional and effective way. A positive and pleasant experience upon conclusion of each engagement is the mark of service-oriented consulting. As a consultant, be able to clearly articulate your service model. If you’re hiring a consultant, be sure to ask how your prospective consultants define and deliver service.

Trust aids in confidence, comfort, and ease of communication - all essential for successful consulting. A relationship based on trust prevents suspicion and misgivings for both providers and consumers of consulting services. Good consultants know how to establish trust and will offer solid and meaningful references who attest to their trustworthiness. Wise consulting clients openly inquire about references and take the time to check them carefully.

Accountability helps to set expectations, enhance communications, prevent misunderstandings, and assure a conflict-free consulting experience for both parties. Before a consulting engagement begins, agree on fees, reimbursable expenses, reporting responsibilities, the form and frequency of progress reports, the basis of billing, and payment terms and conditions.

The one time I take a “true” holiday, switch my phone off, don’t check e-mails, I open the paper and what do I see: THIS.

photo credit: gadl

I was recently asked how to include a recursive hierarchy into a dimensional model.

What do I mean by a recursive hierarchy? This is when an entity (a table) relates to it’s self. Take the following example from an Oracle database:

From this we can see that there is a recursive hierarchy within this table between the empno column and the mgr column, the mgr column shows the employee that is the manager for each row.
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