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Maxima Information Group Microsoft Work

Latest ETL Tool – MS Excel

I have spent all day in MS Excel.
I receive excel spreadsheets in a “fairly” fixed format.
I need to get this data into Business Objects Xcelsius via another spreadsheet that stores historical records and keeps the data in a format optimised for display.
“Normally” I would be using Data integrator (DI) to move the data from the source, store the data in a database table or two, use query as a web service (QAAWS) or Live Office to pull the data from the database directly into Xcelsius.
Here we do not have access to any of these luxuries.
I have written a translation spreadsheet that I can point to a specific source and it will re-shape the data so that it can fit my target spreadsheet. Then it’s just a case of copy and then paste values….
To make this process easier I am using the “INDIRECT” function in excel.
=INDIRECT("[" & $H$1 & "]Data!" & AU$1 & $C17) * 100
Here the current cell will grab the vaue from the workbook named in H1, go to the “Data” spreadsheet then grab the row and column attributes from AU1 and C17 then multiply the number by 100.
This means that next month I just need to change the name of my source spreadsheet and it will all just work. If a row or column “moves” in the source, I just update the metadata (AU1 or C17) in this case.
It takes a long time to set up and to check but next month it should be a breeze.

Categories
Connor Family

Monopoly – Good Or Bad ?

Connor (9) arrived back from staying at an aunts with a new version of the board game Monopoly.
This one is the “E-Banking” edition.
Rather than having stacks of cash to covet or spend, each player gets a “credit card” and the banker has a terminal into which the card can be inserted and the balance shown and then adjusted. During the first game, I started to feel uneasy…

Categories
Ross

100 Pushups – Week 3 = :(

One Hundred Pushups
One Hundred Pushups

Ended week 2 on a high ! Target was 124 pushups in the week and I managed 144, what a buzz.

My first exhaustion test got me 6 pushups. My second one at the weekend I managed 21 but that was a real struggle. I may have undone myself, this just pushed me into the second tier of effort.

The last set from last week was a total of 46, I managed 54.

The first set of this week the target was 83 (20, 15, 15, 13, >20) I only managed 77 (20, 15, 15, 13, 14). Still a personal best though !

I will persevere with the rest of the week, but I will have to repeat week three :(.

Categories
Ross

100 Pushups – Week 1

One Hundred Pushups

That’s week one finished, OK it was a day later than planned but I was wiped out last night.

Target for week one was 104 pushups, I managed 114. At the start of the week in my exhaustion test I managed 7 pressups, I finished this set with 15 !

Roll on next week !

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Fun

BBC News


This made me laugh out loud when I was eating my lunch !

Categories
Business Objects Maxima Information Group Microsoft Work XI 3.0

XI 3.0 – New Features – Publisher

One of the major features being “re-introduced” to the XI product family is Publishing.

This gives you the ability to write a single report, that runs a single query but sends a different “version” of the report to each user.

This is only scraping the surface of the full Publisher functionality, lets have a look at houw you can create your first user targeted publications.

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Business Objects Maxima Information Group Work XI 3.0

Lessons Learned

When in doubt, don’t fiddle.

I “forgot” the admin password for my Business Objects XI 3.0 (Demo) environment.

Some searching turned up a “hack” that would resolve this, which involves deleting data from the repository database. One quick delete later and my installation is broken.

Of course if this was in the “real world”

  • I would have a backup Admin user.
  • All my passwords would be stored in my KeyPass database.
  • Before modifying the database I would have taken a backup.

No worries, I just did an uninstall and re-install – a couple of hours work, but it is work I didn’t have to redo.

Lesson Learned – Treat even your demo system like production!

Categories
Ross

100 Pushups – Take 2

One Hundred Pushups

OK This one really didn’t get a chance.

The week I started, I ended up being away from home, then had a stressfull week following that.

I’m starting this again today. Even if I just continually do week one, it will still do me good, right!

Completed day one : Target = 28 Actual = 30 (but I’m sore already !)

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Emma Family Fundraising Photography

Emma is on Flickr

Emmas Flowers

Emma has finally gotten around to registering on Flickr after years of me harrassing her to!

She has uploaded some of the photos that she took for her photographic exhibition, have a look by clicking on the photo above.

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Uncategorized

Larkhall Orange Order Procession / March 5th July 2008

DSC_7379

Marching season is upon us. This year it was Larkhall’s honour to host a large procession.

It was intermittently rainy but there were smiles everywhere. Quite a bit of staggering as well as the marching ! I never saw any trouble or raised voices.

The police were out in force, I saw a few discrete conversations, but on they whole the police seemed to be in a fairly jovial mood too.