Draw the line between free and paid
“Many newly independent small business people make the mistake of giving away too much of their services for free…”
Google as a Business Intelligence Platform for Small Businesses
April 14, 2008 – 6:04 am
Last week I wrote some thoughts about using the Mac OS X Dashboard for business intelligence. I still think that is a neat idea, but so much has changed in a very short period of time.
The main thing that changed is obviously Google AppEngine. Like with every major tech story these days there has been a mass rush to judgement. The fact of the matter is that it is too soon to tell. Google is a somewhat untrusted (or at least untested) vendor when it comes to mission critical services; Google has also earned more credibility than anyone else when it comes to web applications. So, the jury is still out on whether or not AppEngine will the great or mediocre. One thing we do know is that the addition of Google AppEngine makes Google as a platform more viable. And isn’t becoming the platform the real goal for most tech companies?
Spreadsheets are still the BI tool of choice for most people. Still, Excel has some serious deficiencies for BI. Spreadsheets are typically Shadow Systems by the nature of the way Excel interacts with source of data. (Shadow systems are separate databases outside of the central data repository). This makes spreadsheets cumbersome. You either have to re-import a CSV or tell Excel to update data from an external source (i.e. an ODBC data source) in order for spreadsheets to stay up to date (or option #3 of update it manually). once you share a spreadsheet you now have multiple Shadow Systems.
I am excited by Google docs because they are easy to share and thus reduce the number of Shadow Systems. Unfortunately Google Spreadsheets don’t have the ability to update from a remote data source. This means that to update a Google Spreadsheet you either have to export a csv from your data source and re-import it or you can use the Google API to push data. This is still cumbersome, but the data update can be automated. One big problem with using Google Spreadsheets is that there are limitations on the number of rows you can have. Without being able to query a remote data source you would have to continue pushing data in.
With the beta release of AppEngine developers now have access to a database to use when developing on the Google Platform. It is not a relational database and I don’t expect it will be replacing any mission critical databases. However, I hear that BigTable is fast. Damn fast. I am wondering if it would be a good data warehouse environment. It would require some creative data modeling and there are limited querying functions, but it is fast.
If (and this may be a big if) Google allows BigTable queries from Google Spreadsheets then many of the problems with Excel would be overcome. The spreadsheet would be easy to share without creating Shadow Systems. An added bonus would be that multiple people can collaborate on a spreadsheet at the same time.
BigTable is not designed as a reporting database. It may work as one, but that is not the stated intent. What would be cool is an OLAP database as a part of Google Apps and possible Google AppEngine. I have heard that this may be coming. I am hoping it is sooner rather than later.
A Restaurant In Santa Fe
April 12, 2008 – 10:44 am
Last week Sabrina and I went to see Rent. For those of you not familiar, Rent is a wildly over-rated broadway production that has some very loyal fans known as “Rent-heads” (yeah, creative, I know). While I think Rent is over-rated, it is not bad. To be honest that is quite a compliment coming from someone who is usually bored by drama (theatrical and, uh, real life drama).
Anyway, in Rent there is this song/theme about going to open up a restaurant in Santa Fe. The idea is that we can escape it all by just going to Santa Fe to open a restaurant. Sure, opening a restaurant is one of the most stressful and risky ways to support yourself, but let’s suspend disbelief for a moment. I am sure we all have a desire to go open a restaurant in Santa Fe from time to time.
I used to know what my pipe dream was. Until I had kids I held on to the hope that one day I would get the balls to just pack it all up and sail around the world solo on an old 1970’s fiberglass sailboat (they didn’t know how string fiberglass was in the 70s and thus made some boats that are as sturdy as a tank). Once I had kids that dream was no longer a reality.
I love my wife and kids, though I do wonder what life would have been like if I did it. It was within reach if I really wanted it. I don’t have regret per se, but it is a what-if.
For the past couple of years I have not had a “pack it all up” dream. Sabrina and I both know that we are happier when we are closer to the ocean. I have always wanted to live on the coast. After spending a week in San Jose with the clear air and palm trees, I am kinda thinking about going to open up a restaurant in San Jose.
linkblog: Apr 11
April 12, 2008 – 2:04 am
It’s No Wonder
April 11, 2008 – 11:08 pm
I am sitting on the plan tonight listening to some old Stevie Wonder. “Higher Ground” just came on and there is something about that funky beat that is getting me ready to head to some lower ground at the end of the month.
I seem to recall that Stevie is going to be at Jazz Fest while we are there. Unfortunately I think he might be playing at the same time as The Roots.
Man I am looking forward to this.
Moving Lawson Business Intelligence From Tomcat to Websphere
April 11, 2008 – 2:21 pm
With the release of Lawson Business intelligence (LBI) 9.0.2, Lawson made the decision to no longer support Tomcat in a production environment. Many companies will now need to migrate LBI to Websphere since it is the only supported platform. Since LBI is a Windows-only web application the move to Websphere seems like a good step (though I would rather see Lawson add Unix support than take away Tomcat).
Sadly there is no documentation that I can find on how to move LBI from Tomcat to Websphere. I am making this transition for one of my clients as we speak so I figured it would be a good idea to document the process that worked for me.
- Upgrade LBI to the most current release.
- Backup the LawsonBusinessIntelligence and LawsonDocuments directories.
- Backup the LawsonFS, LawsonRS, and LawsonSN databases.
- Create new databases for temporary use by Websphere. I used wsLawsonFS, wsLawsonRS, wsLawsonSN.
- Stop Tomcat.
- Install Websphere.
- Install IBM HTTP Server (set it to the current port that you use to access LBI. The Lawson default is 8282, but some companies prefer to use port 80, which could conflickt with IIS depending on your setup)
- Create Data Sources in Websphere for wsLawsonFS, wsLawsonRS, and wsLawsonSN. These data sources should have the standard JNDI names (jdbc/LasonFS, jdbc/LawsonRS, jdbc/LawsonSN)
- Use the LBI installer to install LBI into Websphere (as a new installation, not an upgrade)
- Verify that LBI is working properly in Websphere.
- Edit the Websphere data sources to point to the original LBI databases (i.e. jdbc/LawsonFS now points to LawsonFS)
- Test LBI to verify everything works (admin acct will still be set to lawson/lawson)
- If there is problems accessing reports or Reporting Services Admin then edit the RS service via the Tools Dashboard. I had to remove en-us from the URLs.
- Run the Reporting Services installation validator to point LawsonDocuments to the proper location.
- Configure your authentication source using the SysConfig editor.
That worked for me. If you are thinking about going through this process and would like assistance, my contact information is in the right sidebar.
