Just came across a brief but interesting article looking at how the top ranked Barcelona Football Club has handled some tricky management issues, one of which is particularly common to the business intelligence team:
Author: Phil Steffek
Phil Steffek is a professional sumo wrestler who is hoping to represent the U.S. in the next Olympics. During the off season Phil is a Data Architect working on transactional databases, data warehouse implementations, and all aspects of business intelligence. Also, Phil is not really a sumo wrestler.
You can get to know a bit more about my non-sumo doings by checking out my LinkedIn Page
Radar Chart? You must be kidding.
I've been thinking about the display of data quite a bit lately. Some ways of presenting data are clearly more effective than others. When providing data in a visual format the goals are one of the following:
Using Power, Seduction, and War To Improve Productivity
Ouch! Fail! Just endured a smack down at the hands of my team. I pointed out a clear issue affecting the team's productivity (with a solution ready in my back pocket). The team denied it was an issue, saying it was in fact one of the things they take pride in. I was left in… Continue reading Using Power, Seduction, and War To Improve Productivity
Rebuilding A Business Intelligence Team
On April 29th I took on a new position as the lead of the Business Intelligence Team for a local money management firm. To make the story a bit more interesting, I had worked for the same firm five years earlier as the supervisor of their database group. Since that time the firm's assets
Find User’s Default Schema
Need to find the default schema for a user in MS SQL? Need to confirm all your SQL Server users default schema's are set correctly? Easy peasey. Run the following query and enjoy.
When Hiring Your Database Team – Do Not Settle!
One of the unwritten qualifications of a great business intelligence or database team lead are interviewing skills. Finding the right business intelligence pro can often be a slow process that frequently results in upper management demanding you "just pick someone!". Do not give in! This recent interview with Digg founder and angel investor Kevin Rose… Continue reading When Hiring Your Database Team – Do Not Settle!
Database Architects – You Are In Demand
Finding a great Database Architect is a challenging task. I stumbled across a recent post by marketing guru Seth Godin which happened to touch on this and lumped DB Architects in with some rarefied company:
Find Tables Without Clustered Indexes
Need a way to find all tables without a clustered index in SQL Server? Running this script every once in awhile will help ensure best practices are being followed and every table has a clustered index. This script is compatible with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.
SQL Server – Get Proc Name From Within Proc
Use this system function and variable to get the name of a stored procedure from within the procedure itself. The Object Id can also be returned.
Enable xp_cmdshell in SQL Server 2008
Enable xp_cmdshell with a few lines of T-SQL. Fast and Easy!