Cognitive Information – Page 2 – Turning Data into Information

11 Nov 2016

End of Consulting Services

Business

I want to start by saying thank you to all my customers through the years. You've trusted me to come into your company to solve problems with your data systems. You've invited me to your homes, your dinners, birthday lunches and picnics. Like the Motley Crue concert tour 'All good things must end', for me consulting will end December 31, 2016. I started this company in November 2006 with a used laptop and a thousand bucks. I've done a lot of great projects and made a lot of professional friends across the country. I will be working with current customers…

03 Nov 2015

By Allen

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Return on Data – InnoTech Download

BI/DW Projects, Downloads

Thank you to all who attended today's 'Return on Data' session at the 10th Annual InnoTech in Oklahoma City. This session helps chart the waters through the sea of options when working with data. IT departments need tools to turn data into useful information for users. Instead of ROI, this session talks about 'Return on Data' for IT Managers. To measure the return on investment (ROI) of a financial instrument we look at the costs of the investment such as transaction costs or annual expenses as well as the total value of the interest and dividends over time. To look…

23 Oct 2015

By Allen

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Allen Speaking at InnoTech – FREE Tickets!

Business, Microsoft SQL ServerBig Data, business, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing

November 3, 2015 Featuring This Session from Cognitive Information: Return on Data Learn the basics of Business Intelligence, Big Data and getting return on the data in your company, with Allen Smith, MBA, MCTS, Business Intelligence Specialist, Cognitive Information, Inc. CLICK HERE to register, and use discount code: SPKR and receive complimentary admission to InnoTech Oklahoma*. OPENING KEYNOTE ANNOUNCED Opening Keynote: 8am The Internet of Everything Featuring Leah Lewis, Managing Director of Cisco’s Public Sector Consulting Services and an Internet of Everything / Smart+Connected City Strategist And You Won't Want to Miss These Other Great Sessions: Case Study: Seagate’s…

15 Oct 2015

By Allen

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Startup Super Powers You Need

Businessbusiness, entrepreneur

In November Cognitive Information will celebrate 9 years in business. This is quite an accomplishment considering that x% of new companies fail in the first year. In my recent presentation about 'So You Want to Be a SQL Consultant' we discussed the challenges of starting a company. In this article, I give an update on challenges and successes through the years. Power of No - Say yes to the things in your business that only you can do and say "No!" or "Not Now" to the other things. Know where you need to spend your time and where you should…

24 Sep 2015

By Allen

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Psychographics for Small Business

Uncategorized

Every business has data. How are you going to use it? Today we talk about analyzing customer data based on location and psychographics. Location or geospatial data is becoming easier to analyze using free tools such as Google Fusion Tables. Psychographics sounds complicated, but it just means going beyond demographics like age and gender to more lifestyle and behavior based analysis. Psychographic data is available from vendors like ESRI. First, you have to have some data to analyze. Today's businesses realize that data is an asset just like a building, equipment or inventory. It requires some investment of time to…

26 Aug 2015

By Allen

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SSAS Lost security context

SSASSecurity, SSAS

I recently logged into an SSAS server and was unable to add a user to the server security. Worse yet, the Security Properties tab was not showing domain user names, just SID's. This means the service has lost connectivity to resolve SID's with the domain. The solution today was to run SSMS as Administrator, domain admin that is. Once connected the domain administrator account is able to remove the disconnected SID's and add back the proper accounts. On other occasions I have seen the security tab empty, meaning there is no recognized administrators. To resolve that issue, stop the service…

26 Jun 2015

By Allen

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SSAS Tabular Error “The object reference not set to an instance of an object”

SSASerrors, SQL Server, SSAS

This just goes under the blog tag "Useless Error Messages". My instance of this error happened when I added a new calculated column. Finally I realized I had named the new column the same as another column in a different table. Changed one of the names and no error. Lesson learned: SSAS Tabular is picky about not having two columns named the same. So boys and girls, only you can prevent stupid coding mistakes...

12 Jun 2015

By Allen

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SSIS Error

Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS

Recently at a client, the SSIS Server was giving an error message which I had never seen before every time I tried to run a package. Changing protection level: Success Message: An error occurred in the Microsoft .NET Framework while trying to load assembly id 65537. The server may be running out of resources, or the assembly may not be trusted with PERMISSION_SET = EXTERNAL_ACCESS or UNSAFE. Run the query again, or check documentation to see how to solve the assembly trust issues. Googling this error led me to some old SQL 2005 and 2008 articles relating to proxy accounts,…

11 Jun 2015

By Allen

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SpotFire for Analytics

BI/DW Projects

SpotFire for Data Analytics I recently completed a rollout for a major energy company using SpotFire for data analytics from multiple data sources. This is just a quick review of initial impressions. My career in the corporate tower was short, but out of it came some great experience with a new tool in my data toolbox. You can download a free trial here: http://spotfire.tibco.com/ Pro's: Development environment is very easy to learn Learning portal has lots of great videos to get you started Great choices of visualizations Marking - this is a great feature to allow web users to…

11 Jun 2015

By Allen

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Got Agile?

UncategorizedAgile, Business Intelligence

I recently had the privilege of working with a great team which had an Agile Coach and a Certified Scrum Master from SolutionsIQ. Doing Business Intelligence (BI) projects with Agile takes a complete change of attitude and habits for those of us like me who spent the last decade doing waterfall based data warehousing and BI. Here are a few things I learned from a recent project: 1. You can always learn more. The SolutionsIQ team provided great training to our developers, product owners and stakeholders. Some were receptive while others fought it all the way. Their team provided additional…