Agile Data Warehousing

I have had the chance to play with Wherescape RED, I have to say it makes building Data Warehouses a lot faster and a lot simpler!

If you are looking for a product to make your data warehouse creation time shorter as well as fully documented, then do not look past Wherescape RED.

One project took over 8 months to build a data warehouse, with Wherescape RED I built a Data Mart in 3 days!

• Ability to create staging tables with transformations by simple drag-n-drop and double-click capabilities. 
• Creation of slowly changing dimensions is a simple drag-n-drop followed by a wizard answering questions.
• Building fact tables is again, a drag-n-drop operation including adding the dimensions to build your star schemas
• It even has the ability to publish the SSAS cubes
• All this with documentation including data flow diagrams!

It should be noted that I am a Kimball fan, and Wherescape RED adopts the Inmon  approach.

I look forward to understanding this software deeper to empower me in my deliverable.

New Career

I have now started my new employment with the Northern Territory Treasury as a Business Information Manager.

This is my first foray into the world of management and I am looking forward to the challenges and dynamics of this role as I assist others in their daily duties.

18 Years Ago......

I cannot believe that next week on the 31st of March 2011 it is 18 years since the passing of Brandon.

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times. And a very small number really. " - Brandon Lee circa 1993

May we remember him for more than just being Bruce's son.

Customer Service - Worth more than gold!

I have a Hahnel remote and I lost the transmitter. I contacted the manufacturer and was very surprised that the company not only was a pleasure to deal with, they replaced the part free of charge.

If you are after a flash solution for your camera, and want fantastic customer support, look no further than Hahnel. They are still doing business the old fashioned way and have won me over as a customer for my future purchases if they have a product that fullfils my needs.

As I sent in a thank you email to Hahnel: Customer Service is worth more than gold......

So again Hahnel, thank you for the support and I hope you gain more loyal customers because of it.

Lightroom On Multiple Computers?

So I have Lightroom on a couple of computers with a RAID 6 based server and I have been struggling on how to synchronise everything to make my life easier between machines.

I started using robocopy /mir and found this strategy good because it duplicated everything but was a real issue in ensuring changes replicated as I stored both the catalog and the photos on the same disk.

After some decisions I have now moved my photos to the \\server\share and the catalog is tracked via subversion! This makes everything so much easier between machines.

What I have done is created a repository that holds the Lightroom catalog. I have added an exception to not include the preview files as subversion has some issues with them. I also added a couple of batch files that can backup and restore the lightroom preview files to the \\server\share location.

Now my steps are as follows:

1. Update subversion
2. Run update batch file to bring in new preview files
3. Run Lightroom
4. Import pictures
5. Move images between local drive import and shared file share
6. Make any required changes
7. Exit lightroom
8. Commit catalog
9. Run batch file to backup the Lightroom preview files to the \\server\share file
10. That's it!

I have been using this for a week now and I have found this to be robust and reliable without any catalog corruptions.

How do you manage your Lightroom catalog across multiple machines without resorting to carrying around an external hard drive?

Cyclone Carlos

Well, after 600mm of rain in 48 hours, cyclone Carlos has finally lost it's energy. It took the most unusual route for a cyclone that affects this area of Australia. Lots of tree damage but no major infrastructure damage.

Hold On Tight Qld!

Those poor businesses and families in Qld. Not only have they had to contend with flooding, but now Cyclone Yasi is knocking on their door as the biggest cyclone in recent history.

How big you ask, well the image blow shows super imposed over the USofA

Image from News.com.au

ABC Australia has a Live Feed if you need to keep posted about what is happening.

Good luck Qld. Our thoughts are with you........