Urgent Requirement

We need a Siebel Analytics consultant for a contract in the UK - not in the North :)

As usual, we have more work than people. If you are an Analytics consultant (i.e. know all about rpd development) then please get in touch.

There will be a technical interview, so please don't try bluffing me!

For the right candidate we'll pay £550 per day initially, rising to £600 after three months.


Start in mid July

If you know anyone who may be interested please get in touch.

Adrian
07801 480900
adrian.ward@majendi.com

SE One is here

Oracle have officially launched SE One - Like Siebel Analytics only cheaper.

This is the pricing package we have all been waiting for. There is no excuse for any company to not buy Analytics. This can be used for what Analytics is good at => RAD (DSDM) warehouse projects. Finance departments should take a really good look at replacing their Access Databases with this.

You'd think I had shares in Oracle (I Don't)!

http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid41_gci1262237,00.html

Freedom of the City

I had a great day today. I had to go to the Camberlains court and swear allegiance to the Queen and to the Lord Mayor. We (my wife and I) were then granted the Freedom of the city of London.
I can now drive sheep over tower bridge.

Interesting Note from Oracle

This note was published today. It may explain the questions I have been getting.

"The Standard Cost General table (W_STANDARD_COST_G) and the Exchange Rate General table (W_EXCH_RATE_G) are general reference tables.

Both tables have surrogate keys (ROW_WID). But unlike dimension surrogate keys, these surrogate keys are not referenced as foreign keys by any fact tables. Therefore the general tables do not participate in the star schema. They are not designed for use in reports and queries.

The general tables are intended for use as lookups during Extract-Transform-Load (ETL). For example, the Standard Cost General table provides cost information for a particular product in a particular inventory. The cost information will then be stored in the fact table directly. Similarly, the Exchange Rate General table provides the exchange rate between a pair of currencies for a specific day, given the exchange rate type.

The following are some WIDs in the general tables. They are not necessarily populated and they are not intended for use. These columns are:

W_STANDARD_COST_G.PRODUCT_WID
W_STANDARD_COST_G.CREATED_BY_WID
W_STANDARD_COST_G.CHANGED_BY_WID
W_EXCH_RATE_G.CREATED_BY_WID
W_EXCH_RATE_G.CHANGED_BY_WID

If you need to have a cost dimension, you need to design a different table. It is not recommended that you alter the Standard Cost General table for this purpose. "

Professional Indemnity Schedule

Just so I can point people to the evidence, here is our insurance certificate.

Professional Indemnity Schedule

Oracle Warehouse Builder Documentation

Today was spent installing Oracle databases and Warehouse tools onto one of the Majendi Laptops. It's good to keep doing these to keep your eye in.

A valuable resource if you cannot memorise everything is :

Oracle Warehouse Builder Documentation

A typical question

Please keep sending in your questions, it's interesting to see what challenges you guys (and Girls - Vicky!) face.


Here's a recent one


Hello Adrian,

I need little help.

Our company is implementing Oracle BI 10.x. We don't have much experience in Siebel Analytics/OBI.

We have few fact tables e.g. W_SALES_PICK_LINE_F, which we need/wish to extend. We are not sure about which methodology we should implement.
When we talked with few SA experts they mentioned we need to extend based on ROW_WID. Well, this column doesn't exists anymore in many fact tables, so currently we are thinking of creating ROW_WID on this F table manually and then create WC_SALES_PICK_LINE_FX and take these two tables in physical layer of RPD.

Additially, we need to create few Informatica mappings, again SA experts pointed out to use Image tables. Our data source is Oracle Applications, I don't have much idea about Image tables, but clearly there is not S_ETL_I_IMGAGe or so tables in Oracle Apps

Please guide us as how to proceed on these two issues.

Thanks in advance


and my answer

I am surprised to hear that ROW_WID has been removed from standard vanilla tables. I don't think your system will work without the ROW_WID field. Add the field back in quick! :)

My advice is to extend an existing table, not to create _FX tables. Providing you keep good control on your alter table scripts there are no issues with extending vanilla tables.

Take a copy of the vanilla mappings and customise these in your custom mappings folders. Do not update the vanilla mappings in place - they will be over written in an upgrade.

You can create your own image tables in the oracle db. The alternative is to use a last modified field in the table being imported.

You only need to create immage tables where there is lots of data, typically more than one million rows


Please can you send me more details on the project. It's good to understand where you are coming from, if you send me your rpd I can provide some feedback


Adrian
-------------------------------------------------------
Mobile: 07801 480900

Analytics Projects - Who wants one?

Whilst looking around for my next client I realise that we, as Analytics consultants, need to talk to each other more. Whats more, the consultancies and clients really need a place to go for reliable, experienced Analytics specialists.

I was discussing one new project with Haider and it turns out he worked on it before. It's a small world, and Siebel Analytics has a relatively small client base (my wild guess is 400-500 UK clients, half of which are active).
I know about 75 Analytics consultants. There are probably another 100 out there, perm employees, that may one day become freelance and pop up in the Majendi radar.

At the moment the Agencies have a good control on the Market. There are some that put out adverts for non existant jobs. They are useful to the liquidity of the market and some work hard for their cut of you pay. Just be careful they are not taking too much, the best ones have a fixed percentage with their clients. More than 15% is excessive.

So how do we help consultants? We probably should look at the networking capabilty that's out there, linkedIn, Xing, ecademy, Yahoo, etc, and perhaps set-up an OBIEE/Analytics forum. There we could share thoughts on prices to charge, new projects, help needed, technical stuff, etc. I have started one group on Yahoo, if you fancy joining in, let me know - it's invite only. I'm not sure if this helps the clients though.


Any thoughts?

On the subject of rate. You are what you charge. If you charge a cheap rate, your will be percieved as local quality, if you charge a premium rate you should deliver a premium level of service.
What are those rates? My view is that a certified consultant with 2 years (min 3 projects) Analytics consultant should be charging a minimum of 600 GBP per day. Lead consultants, with 7+ project should be GBP 750 per day. The consultancies will obviously need to charge clients a higher level. Some of the cheaper ones are charging 6-700 euro per day, the better ones, with good experience and efficient work, will be charging 900 plus.
One client I saw recently had a greatdeal with a low cost provider, the problem was they didn;t trust the work, and the estimate for time was nearly double what was really required. The client ends up paying nearly the same for inferior work. Somehow we need to educate that quality is very important to them, not cheapness.

Insurance time

I just had to renew the Professional Indemnity insurance, which this years comes to over 1,300 pounds!

We use Trafalgar, seem to provide good cover, but not sure if they are the cheapest. However, you can do it all online which saves a huge amount of time.

Use the link to get a quote.





Dear *NAME*,

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Since 1995, Trafalgar Risk Management has focused on providing computer contractors with specialist insurance cover – Professional Indemnity; Tax & VAT Investigation; Employers’ & Public Liability.

Using state of the art computer systems we can provide quotes; accept applications; accept premium payment and allow you to print out all your relevant documentation out online – within minutes!

Furthermore, by streamlining our purchase & renewal procedures, the reduction in administration costs can be passed back to you, as can be seen in the extremely competitive premiums we offer.

We hope the above will be of interest to you and for further information please visit our website through the following link:

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Trafalgar Risk Management
The Lloyds Building
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Tel: 0845 685 2610
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Trafalgar Risk Management Limited is authorised and regulated by The Financial Services Authority under registration number 311662.

Trafalgar Risk Management Limited is a member of the British Insurance Brokers Association

FAQ 2289: How Do You Customize Default Header Links in the Oracle BI Presentation Services Interface?

This supportweb note came out today. It's well worth looking at if you need to customize the links in your BI Publisher.

FAQ 2289: How Do You Customize Default Header Links in the Oracle BI Presentation Services Interface?

Majendi Day out pics

The team went for a day out on the Company Yacht!

Skype

Some say "SCIPE" others "SkyPee"

Whichever you say, it's worth getting it. Free calls. We use it for conferencing.

you can find me on the system as username 'adyward'

www.skype.com