Perspectives on Microsoft, SQL, Business Intelligence, and other things

Bye Bye, My Love

Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 1:23 PM by jhuschka | 2 Comments

What is the plural of "Prius"?

Can anyone tell me what the plural of the word "Prius" is?

 Fill-in the empty space: "Wow Karen!  Look at all those _________ (many Prius)!"

Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2006 1:47 PM by jhuschka | 7 Comments

Business Intelligence Basics: Having a Target/Goal (Part 4)

Subtitle: "An Incredibly Simple Example of Budget Modeling"

Most budget versus actual comparisons reduce down to the comparison of two fully-qualified account balances:

Although there are many variations, a “fully-qualified account” is defined within most business accounting systems as a combination of an organizational identifier called a “cost center” and a financial “bucket” called an “account”.

Many of your reading this probably have some concept of a budget.  Your budget probably has one cost center such as “Ward’s House”, and it probably has multiple accounts such as “Automotive Expense”, “Food Expense”, and “Income”.

Now, think about what is going through your mind as you are building your budget for the next year.  You almost certainly do not automatically know what the charges to your “Automotive Expense” account are going to be each month.  Rather, something like the following is probably going through your head:

Ok.  It looks like the cost of gasoline is going to be coming down a bit.   Therefore, I can probably plan for a bit less fuel expense per month ($125).

But, the Toyota is about to hit 100,000 miles, so we are going to have to get its scheduled maintenance ($725) in February…and it looks like it is going to need tires ($350) around March.

Welcome to the world of budget modeling.

You are taking the facts that you know (scheduled maintenance required for the Toyota in February) and translating them into account activity ($725 in “Automotive Expense” in February).

After February is history, you will be able to see how much you actually spent on “Automotive Expense” and compare it to your budget.

Well, businesses do the same thing.

Let’s assume that “Generic Corporation” has two employees for which it wants to budget.  (It will ultimately need to budget for all its employees, but let’s focus on these two.)

Both employees work for the “Information Technology Department”, cost center 5200.

Since Generic Corporation tracks results for each month, the first step of our modeling is to translate annual salary to monthly salary. (Remember, we need to compare actual to budget for the same time periods.)

One of the accounts that we need to calculate is “Salary Expense”, account 3201.  This one is pretty straightforward.  It is the sum of the salaries:

So, for example, the fully-qualified budget for cost center 5200, account 3201, for February is $9,583.33.

Another account that we need to calculate is “Retirement Tax”, account 3205.  It is charged at a rate of 1.45%, for the employee’s initial $55,000 of income.  (For those of you acquainted with Social Security, this is similar to Social Security, but I have intentionally not made it exactly the same.)

Notice how our budgeted expenses for November for Frank Smith decrease because his salary has surpassed the initial income threshold of $55,000.

Therefore, for example, the fully-qualified budget for cost center 5200, account 3205, for November is $72.50.

Seems pretty simply, doesn’t it.  Well, this example is simple, but for a typical business, budget modeling can become very complex.

Imagine modeling expected sales revenue for a corporation.  What do we know about our customers’ purchase patterns?  Are there outside factors such as the weather or economy that are going to impact our sales?  Will our sales revenue be capped by our ability to produce our product?  Is our new marketing campaign going to boost sales?

Imagine modeling expected expenses associated with making and selling the products:  What is the cost of fuel going to be?  Are our suppliers going to change the prices they charge us for our raw materials?  What is cost of labor (people) for making the products going to be?  Are we going to have to raise their salaries to keep them? 

Posted Monday, October 02, 2006 12:44 PM by jhuschka | 1 Comments

SQL Server 2005 Metadata: Who is connected and how?

Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:24 AM by jhuschka | 2 Comments

Business Intelligence Basics: Having a Target/Goal (Part 3)

Last entry, I discussed how budgeting is, in essence, a modeling process.  Today, I want to talk about some of Microsoft’s modeling products for business.

Before I start, I need to give the caveat that Microsoft has a large number of products, many of which could have a role in the business budgeting process.  My intent is to focus on those that provide modeling capabilities.  (Please feel free to comment if I miss something.)

Microsoft Excel is easily the dominant player in corporate budgeting.  Recent surveys by CFO Research Services have shown that between 70 and 80 percent of companies use spreadsheets for budgeting, of which Excel is, by far, the dominant player.

Excel has a number of advantages:

1)       It is completely generic and flexible, providing a blank slate by which an analysis can model his/her business exactly as he/she feels appropriate.

2)       It also has built-in charting and reporting functionality.

3)       The knowledge base of the product is immense.

Some work essentials for budgeting in Excel may be found at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011961621033.aspx.

The upcoming Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a server-based product for scorecarding and analysis as well as budgeting and planning.  As with Excel, it provides the customer with extremely powerful modeling capabilities.  In addition, it adds the power of centralized SQL Server and Analysis Server technologies to support corporate-level modeling (e.g. summarization across levels of the organization).  For more information on PerformancePoint, see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX101550371033.aspx.

Microsoft Forecaster, the product on which I work, is a server-based product for budgeting and planning.  It is aimed at the mid to small size companies that generally do not have full-time staff dedicated to business planning.  Out-of-the-box, it comes with models for human resources, capital, and revenue.  It also provides centralized SQL Server storage and processing capabilities.  For more information on Microsoft Forecaster, see http://www.microsoft.com/forecaster/default.mspx.

Microsoft Dynamic AX is an enterprise-level Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software package.  As part of its suite of budgeting functionality, it provides budgeting and modeling capabilities.  One of the significant advantages of budgeting with Dynamics is that budget data and functionality are hosted within one integrated package, laying a robust foundation for budget versus actual performance monitoring.  For more information on Microsoft Dynamics AX, see http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/ax/default.mspx.

Microsoft Dynamics GP is an ERP software package.  It supports budgeting via its tight integration with Excel.  For more information on Microsoft Dynamics GP, see http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/default.mspx.

Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 3:23 PM by jhuschka | 135 Comments

Thoughts from the Technical Monastery

If you have been tracking this blog, you may have noticed that my rate of posting has going down recently.  (Thanks for noticing!)

I have been busy doing my “real job”, working to complete the next release of Microsoft Forecaster.

It is during times like these that I’m reminded of how incredibly isolating focused, technical work can be.

I’ve experienced this before on other projects:  I’m busy cranking out functionality—coding, testing, debugging—and I know so little about what is going on in the world around me:  From the weekend plans of my cube neighbor (yes, I do have a cube), to what my spouse is thinking and experiencing, to the latest Microsoft releases (see http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/sep06/09-14ZuneUnveilingPR.mspx), to the latest happenings in the world (see http://www.msnbc.com).

It is as if I am spending time in the monastery of the technical, working to produce my unique and (hopefully) perfectly correct copy of the application gospel.  (See http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/word/bigbible2.htm.)

For me, the engineer, this time problem is very challenging because I want the “correct” answer.  It seems “correct” to focus on cranking out the code to deliver the next generation of Microsoft Forecaster better and sooner.  But, somewhat in opposition to that, it doesn’t seem “correct” in our age of interconnection to lose connection to the extent that I do.

I am sure that there are those of you out there who will point-out that there are many allocations of time that would address both in varying degrees.  The answer is not binary.

This is also a challenge to me, for I share that renaissance monk’s goal of creating scripture (code) that is perfect—for the ages.

So, I toil away, keeping a constant eye on my keyboard calligraphy and ensuring that my writings properly reflect my scriptural requirements.

If a Johann Gutenberg (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07090a.htm) ever comes to the world of application development, removing the requirement of hand-coding, he will truly revolutionize my life as well as our application development society.

Posted Friday, September 22, 2006 9:22 AM by jhuschka | 0 Comments

Business Intelligence Basics: Having a Target/Goal (Part 2)

Business Intelligence Basics: Having a Target/Goal

“Business intelligence” can be a term that has a rather generic meaning, meaning many different things to many different people.  Throughout all these definitions there is generally one central theme:  That of providing timely information to decision makers such that they can make decisions that help drive the organization towards its goals.

You can see this in documents such as http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/solutions/bi/top10.mspx and http://www.microsoft.com/sql/solutions/bi/overview.mspx

One of the popular implementations of business intelligence today is the “Balanced Scorecard”.   The “Balanced Scorecard” concept was introduced by Kaplan and Norton and focuses on measuring the performance of the organization versus goals in four areas:  Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, and Learning and Growth.  (See http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_balancedscorecard.html.)

A basic example of a balanced scorecard, showing a comparison of actual and target, as implemented by Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, can be seen here.

So, we know that business intelligence is supposed to help us make decisions in line with our goals.  We know that our scorecards probably need to show the goals against which performance is being measured.  Yet, it seems that the goals are so often taken for granted or even completely ignored.

As an employee and consultant outside of Microsoft, I have worked with organizations for which their goals in very important areas were at best ambiguous and at worst missing.  They may have the concept of managing to the minimum.  “Get the bug list as small as possible,” for example.  But they may not have a concept of what is acceptable.  “We will ship when the bug list is x size.”  (This is not Microsoft.)

They may manage to a trend.  “Is it going up?” for example.  But they may not have a concept of an acceptable rate.  If your high-tech company had been returning a relatively healthy growth rate of twenty percent in 1998, you would have still been under-performing your competition.  (See NASDAQ Rate of Change.)

Tracy Brinkmann, goal setting and success coach, says 'You must have an aim, a vision, a goal. For the man sailing through life with no destination or "port-of- call', every wind is the wrong wind'.

We can also take goals for granted at a technical level.  If you create an automated scorecard that compares goal versus actual, you are going to need the goal.  You are going to need the goal at an organizational level, time dimension, and unit of measure consistent with the actual value from your operational systems.  Where is that going to come from?  Does it exist in an accessible data store?  How is it being collected?  Who is responsible for it?

In subsequent blog entries, I’m going to explore goal setting in the context of business intelligence a bit more.

I welcome your comments.

Posted Tuesday, August 15, 2006 1:41 PM by jhuschka | 5 Comments

Who Wants an Ignorant Car? Let's Talk "Smart" Car

I am amazed at the degree to which Microsoft is involved in the “smart” car—to the degree that there are multiple and, perhaps, confusing definitions for “smart” car.

For example, Microsoft has partnered with Fiat to offer a car that runs Windows, has USB and Bluetooth.  See Microsoft And Fiat Team Up For Smart Car.  The company has been involved with making cars smarter since at least 2002 (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jul02/07-15winceautomotive.mspx) and continues to be involved today (http://www.microsoft.com/industry/manufacturing/automotive/default.mspx).  Microsoft has even patented a “Smart Car Radio”.  See United States Patent: 6996390.

But the “Smart Car” that comes to mind for many of us is likely the Smart Car that recently roamed around the Microsoft campus in Redmond.  See Seattle's Conscious Choice: Drive Time, which includes a picture of the car.

I think the Smart Car is pretty interesting.  (I’d love to test drive one sometime.)  With gas prices going north of $3.00, it’s pretty exciting that it gets 40 to 55 miles per gallon—the third most efficient in the United States.  It also makes getting around in tight spaces a snap.

Currently, availability is pretty limited.  (See ZAP Automotive Dealers.)  However, the car is going to see wide distribution in the United States beginning in 2008.  See DaimlerChrysler's Smart Move.

Apparently, I’m not the only one that finds this car interesting.  Smart Car of America gives you the opportunity to get onto the waiting list for the U.S. debut of the car on its official site (for $55.00):  Smart Car of America - News and Information on The Smart Car - Home

But, hey, this is a SQL/BI blog, right?  Well, I also think it is pretty cool that Smart car (is) manufactured under control of a Microsoft-based Panorama solution, and this solution is based on Microsoft SQL Server.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the day when DBAs are just as important for transportation as the car mechanic.  (“Whoa…this one’s gonna cost ya!”)

Other random notes on the Smart Car:

Recently, Gadetopia did a Smart Car Review.

The first question out of anyone’s mouth when seeing this car is “What happens in a crash?”  Well, you can see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ao_C89CgR8, a pretty amazing video.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 12:21 PM by jhuschka | 2 Comments

Blogs on the Road

One of my interests is mobile computing.

I have a personal interest:  I own a Windows Mobile Cingular 8125 phone/PDA.  (See Cingular 8125- Cingular Wireless.)  So, as I am starting to get “in” to blogging, it is only logical that I start asking “How can I take blogging with me on the road?”

I also have a more professional interest: I think one of the very clear trends of our industry is mobile computing.  According to GLOBAL WIRELESS MARKET DATA: Worldwide Mobile Market Forecasts 2006-2011, there were 2.129 billion wireless subscribers at the end of 2005.  By 2011, there will be 3.964 billion subscribers.  According To In-Stat Strong Growth In Wireless Subscriber Base Resumes, the vast majority of the growth will be in Asia where I understand that wireless is not just a nice portable technology but one that allows a large population to receive information without a wired infrastructure.

So, roughly translated, between now and 2011, there are going to be almost 2 billion new wireless customers.  It might be a good idea for me to know something about wireless computing.

It was with this in mind that I opened Internet Explorer the other day and started searching for RSS feed browsers for my Windows Mobile phone/PDA.

I ended up downloading AvantGo, which is a Microsoft partner.  (See What is Windows Mobile?)

AvantGo is far more than an RSS feed reader.  I would describe AvantGo as a portal specifically designed for the mobile platform.  Content is delivered to you as “channels” to which you subscribe.

AvantGo’s business model is the now familiar one in which the basic software is free to the user, but the user sees advertising—of which Microsoft is one.  You can subscribe for a fee to get greater capacity.  In either case, you create a user id on the AvantGo site, and you manage the channels to which you subscribe from either your PDA or AvantGo’s site.

I have mixed feelings about this approach—placing such personally-identifiable software on my phone/PDA, but I am finding value in the software.  The primary value is that I know that the content I’m receiving has been specifically aimed at the PDA.

I downloaded the 6.2 beta version—which I understand plays much better with ActiveSync than previous versions.  (See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync38.mspx, notes at bottom of page.)  I am syncing by my wireless connection, however.

My initial reaction is fairly positive:  The RSS browser seems well-suited for the PDA screen.  It is pretty cool to see Ward Pond's Blog and Bob Beauchemin's Blog on my PDA screen.  Full text of the articles is downloaded on request using my wireless connection.   The syncing seems a bit cranky at times, however.

I will keep you informed of my adventures.

I welcome your comments.

Posted Wednesday, August 09, 2006 11:23 AM by jhuschka | 1 Comments

SQL Server 2005: 1 Picture = 1k Words

I bet if you did a statistical analysis of questions about SQL Server 2005, you would end up with a pattern approximating the 80/20 rule.    That is, 80 percent of the questions would be on 20 percent of the topics.

I really like what Jens Süßmeyer has introduced in his blog:  Screencasts aimed at addressing some common questions.  The "common questions" part addresses the 80/20 rule, and the screencast format does it in a visible way that virtually anyone can reproduce and (hopefully) understand. 

See http://sqlserver2005.de/SQLServer2005/MyBlog/tabid/56/EntryID/11/Default.aspx.  Note the "Screencasts" link at the top of the page.

Posted Monday, August 07, 2006 4:35 PM by jhuschka | 0 Comments

(2B) || !(2B)

After posting my first entry on Wednesday, dealing with “How to be a good blogger?”, I have been considering questions of philosophy.

What do I believe to be a good blog entry worthy of posting?

You see, I would like this blog to be successful.  I would like it to provide the greatest number of people with opportunity to discuss (presumably Microsoft-related) topics that are important to them in a way that they find valuable.

But what does that look like?

Based on my informal survey and experience, it seems like blog content falls into two broad categories:  Fact and opinion.

Some facts people care about.  Some they do not.

Facts invite consumers—people who either need a fact or do not need a fact, likely find it with a quick query against a search engine, and move on.

Opinion, on the other hand, invites discussion, and healthy discussion invites participation by more people, which adds value—all important success criteria.

Therefore, I present the following guiding philosophy for my future blog postings:

·         Each post will be aimed at providing value to you who read it and wish to discuss it.

·         If the post is opinion, it will, hopefully, invite you to think about it and respond.

·         If the post is fact, I will aim to make it unique, and it will invite you to explore it, perhaps developing additional facts and opinions.

·         I’m learning.  If this philosophy doesn’t work, I’ll change it.

I welcome your comments.

Posted Friday, August 04, 2006 4:06 PM by jhuschka | 0 Comments

How to be a good blogger?

That is exactly the question that I’ve been asking myself the last few days since my friend Ward Pond asked me for a link to my blog—which didn’t exist.  When I searched the net for an answer, one of the first places at which I landed was at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research which, in June 2006, published the report “Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere”.  In this report, 74 successful bloggers were surveyed regarding their blogging.  I think it would be unfair to this rather extensive report for me to attempt to summarize it here, so I encourage you to click on the link at take a look at it for yourself.

On reading the report, however, it appears clear that, in blogging, I am engaging in a conversation with others (as opposed to, for example, publishing to my readers).  I need to be authentic, provide value to those who engage in conversation with me, and have some level of focus.

It is the latter requirement that poses the most challenge to me.  I think most people who know me would consider me to be a SQL Server/SQL specialist.  However, I wonder how much I can add to the SQL discussion with people such as Ward Pond, Bob Beauchemin, Roger Wolter, The SQL CLR Team, The SQL Server Engine Team, The SQL Programmability and API Development Team, The SQL Query Optimization Team, and Kimberly Tripp, to name a few, blogging.  Hendry Lee, the “Small Business Blogging Scout” brings some encouragement to me by saying that such “too much competition” defeatism is one of the Myths of blogging.

Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2006 1:52 PM by jhuschka | 4 Comments