It was last summer that I developed a new tutorial for SSAS. The aim of this tutorial is to make students familiar with SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services. It might be helpful for you if you are an absolute beginner; otherwise, there is nothing new that you can learn from. The tutorial is based on a fictitious scenario which is grounded on simplified version of AdventureWorks Database.
Unfortunately, I cannot share the data source of this tutorial.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Stanford Machine Learning course
It has been always a true challenge for me to understand Data Mining in depth.
I have always problem to have a deep understanding of data mining algorithm, since all of them were ended to the mathematical formula that I have no idea about them.
Some times ago, I found the Machine Learning course at Stanford University. This is a free course, and I strongly recommend this course to ones who like to have a deep understanding of these algorithms.
This course will give you deep knowledge and understanding about different algorithm. it also gives you clue to distinguish which approach suits you the most in applying Data mining.
Finally, it is really awesome, since you should write some linear algebra programs that implement these algorithms. Therefore, it is not just theoretical, but also it is really practical.
I finish the course successfully, and the course will be repeated in January.
Other courses which are offered free are:
- Machine Learning
- The Lean Launchpad
- Technology Entrepreneurship
- Anatomy
- Making Green Buildings
- Information Theory
- Model Thinking
- Computer Science
- Software Engineering for Software as a Service
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Natural Language Processing
- Game Theory
- Probabilistic Graphical Models
- Cryptography
- Design and Analysis of Algorithms I
- Computer Security
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
MDX and DAX Formatter
Today, I watched a video about "Format MDX&DAX" online application. This application enables you to convert the MDX or DAX expressions into a readable expression. it would be usefull specially when you are tracing your application and using "Microsoft SQL Server Profiler".
You can see the video here.
link of application
You can see the video here.
link of application
Saturday, November 27, 2010
BIDS Helper
I participate at Data Warehouse course as the teacher assistant this term.
I face lots of interesting questions and solutions by different students' groups when they asked questions for designing the solution for their assignment.
One interesting things that I have not seen before, was Dimension Health Check facility.
You can install the BIDS Helper adds. It provides you some new facilities that make your job as Data warehouse designer or developer easier.
You can see its facilities and find its link to download here:
http://bidshelper.codeplex.com
I face lots of interesting questions and solutions by different students' groups when they asked questions for designing the solution for their assignment.
One interesting things that I have not seen before, was Dimension Health Check facility.
You can install the BIDS Helper adds. It provides you some new facilities that make your job as Data warehouse designer or developer easier.
You can see its facilities and find its link to download here:
http://bidshelper.codeplex.com
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Process Mining
Extracting relevant knowledge for decision makers is the key activity in all Business Intelligence areas. Different areas provide capabilities with which we can extract different knowledge from our data. For example, we can discover patterns, clusters and etc. using data mining. An example of pattern mining techniques is sequence mining, where we aim to discover the sequential order of events that happens in a data. Despite the wide use of sequence mining in different areas like biology, these algorithms have not been employed much to add values to business domains. The reason might be the complexity that exists in businesses and the way that we handle our businesses. Many businesses are running through a formal or informal agenda, called business processes. These processes define how different activities in a business process should be handled to fulfill the goal of the business. The relation between these activities can be quite complex, so the analysis of their data could be quite challenging. Let's see the situation with some example.
Imagine that we have a company consists of several informal business processes. This means that we have not modeled our processes, and people know it by heart. If we want to define the business process, we can interview different people who are involved. This is very costly, and it can be biased based on the information that people give to us. We should always consider the probability that not all people tell the way that they work; instead, many might tell the way that they should work! Although we do not have formal business process models, we have the result of execution of our business in different Information Systems. This includes different databases that record different activities, or different log files that persist different actions through time. Business Process Discovery is a sub-area of the process mining that aims to discover business process models through these information. It offers a different algorithm that enables us to discover these models from captured information.
Interesting? Yes! but it is not the end of the story!
Imagine that you have a formal business process model, and the information that records the activities that happened in your business. How can you make sure if what is happening in your business is complying with what you have defined in business process model? Is there any fraud case? Is there any employee who does not know the work but (s)he doesn't know! These sort of questions can be answered if we are able to compare our process model with the information that has been captured in the log files. This is another area of Process Mining which is called Conformance checking.
Wow! so far so good! Can we expect more from Process Mining?
Off course! business processes can capture many different perspectives. For example, they can be so basic that only describes which activity should be performed when! but they can be extended to explain who should perform each activity! Consider a company that has a basic process model. The company might not be able to define who should perform each task at beginning. Instead, the manager lets people work, and after a while (s)he wants to assign people to different activities based on the successful experiences of running the business process. I am sure you are sharp enough to realize that this information are already captured in our databases and log files! so, can we give the basic version of the process model and our log file to an algorithm and expect to receive a evolved version of the business process capturing who should do each activity? Off course! It is called Process Enhancement!
That is amazing! Can we be even more greedy to expect even more?
Sure! The good news is that we can combine Process Mining with other Mining techniques like Rule Mining and etc to expand the power of our magic! If you are interested to know more, there is a research group at the Eindhoven University of Technology that conducts this project, you can find more information on their site.
Today is the third year of this blog! I will get the data mining course next term, and I am very eager to learn and perform it in different contexts.
Imagine that we have a company consists of several informal business processes. This means that we have not modeled our processes, and people know it by heart. If we want to define the business process, we can interview different people who are involved. This is very costly, and it can be biased based on the information that people give to us. We should always consider the probability that not all people tell the way that they work; instead, many might tell the way that they should work! Although we do not have formal business process models, we have the result of execution of our business in different Information Systems. This includes different databases that record different activities, or different log files that persist different actions through time. Business Process Discovery is a sub-area of the process mining that aims to discover business process models through these information. It offers a different algorithm that enables us to discover these models from captured information.
Interesting? Yes! but it is not the end of the story!
Imagine that you have a formal business process model, and the information that records the activities that happened in your business. How can you make sure if what is happening in your business is complying with what you have defined in business process model? Is there any fraud case? Is there any employee who does not know the work but (s)he doesn't know! These sort of questions can be answered if we are able to compare our process model with the information that has been captured in the log files. This is another area of Process Mining which is called Conformance checking.
Wow! so far so good! Can we expect more from Process Mining?
Off course! business processes can capture many different perspectives. For example, they can be so basic that only describes which activity should be performed when! but they can be extended to explain who should perform each activity! Consider a company that has a basic process model. The company might not be able to define who should perform each task at beginning. Instead, the manager lets people work, and after a while (s)he wants to assign people to different activities based on the successful experiences of running the business process. I am sure you are sharp enough to realize that this information are already captured in our databases and log files! so, can we give the basic version of the process model and our log file to an algorithm and expect to receive a evolved version of the business process capturing who should do each activity? Off course! It is called Process Enhancement!
That is amazing! Can we be even more greedy to expect even more?
Sure! The good news is that we can combine Process Mining with other Mining techniques like Rule Mining and etc to expand the power of our magic! If you are interested to know more, there is a research group at the Eindhoven University of Technology that conducts this project, you can find more information on their site.
Today is the third year of this blog! I will get the data mining course next term, and I am very eager to learn and perform it in different contexts.
Friday, July 23, 2010
The Kimball Group Reader: Relentlessly Practical Tools for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
If you followed kimball articles, you may be interested to have all of them in an organized collection like a book.
Yes, Kimball published a new book based on these articles. I just could say that it is more than a collection of articles. Indeed, they provide a good description and tips about the whole data warehouse lifecycle using these articles.
I just took a look at it, and it was really facinate me to read it.
Monday, July 19, 2010
IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook
I received a free copy of this book in order to write my standpoint on it.
I think if you are new to cognos, or if you worked with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, and want to migrate to cognos this book is very nice to follow.
Indeed, it makes the learning of cognos easier by providing lots of examples which are describes with lots of pictures.
Honestly, I think if you are professional in one reporting tools, you don't need any book, and you can just surf the tool and follow the help to overcome its difficulties.
By the way, if you are not a guru on any reporting tools, or if you do not have enough time to spend on the cognos to migrate from SSRS, I strongly recommend this book.
This book is not going to introduce any concept or any sophesticated techniques on reporting. However, it provides easy to follow step by step instructions to get familiar with the IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio.
Book Link
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