Kasper On BI

Keeping track of the Healthcare industrie in the US is very intresting, for some time now the word “Health 2.0” keeps popping up. Just concluded in San Diego is the Health 2.0 Conference with some very good speakers and new idea’s.   But first what is “Health 2.0” ?   A definition from health20.org/wiki: “Health 2.0 Definition: “New concept of healthcare wherein all the constituents (patients, physicians, providers, and payers) focus on healthcare value (outcomes/price) and... Read more

Me and my colleagues were planning on developing a application to play a WPF application in the Media Center. I have installed the MCE SDK a year ago on my Developing Image. When checking the MCE development site I came across a post that announced a new SDK version. In the changelog:   “Deprecated Features:The following platform features have been deprecated with this release: Hosting for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) browser applications... Read more

Yesterday i read 2 great blogs about MDM and how Performance Point will benefit thereof. Microsoft purchased Stratature, a company that has focused on Master Data Management (MDM) software which will enhance the already great BI offerings from Microsoft.   A small excerpt from the blogs: “Master Data Management (MDM) is defined as the technology, tools, and processes required to create and maintain consistent and accurate lists of master data.” The authors are also careful to... Read more

When playing with WPF and databindings i was a little frustrated with the lack of debug possibility’s of databindings in XAML. The problem is of course that XAML is no code. The blog of Beatriz Costa offers some great solutions:http://www.beacosta.com/blog/?p=52 The best is using the Converter solution, add the following class to your codebehind:public class DebuggingConverter : IValueConverter        {            public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)            {                return value; // Add the... Read more

Last night, after my WPF training, I decided to make a WPF application which can run on Media Center to play Last.FM streams and get info about my played tracks with of course some nice graphs :).   Last.FM has loads of webservices which geeks like me can use to get data, see http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices/.   Of course i want to use LINQ to get to my data, for those who are new to LINQ read this to... Read more

In case you missed it, Microsoft announced SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) at MIX08, and you can sign up for a free beta.   It’s “a Web-facing utility-based services designed for businesses and developers  that need scalable, highly available, secure  and easily programmable on-demand data storage with robust database query capabilities.”   What SSDS offers: Virtually limitless, on-demand scalability. Customers pay only for the resources actually consumed Reduced costs.  Customers use the service with minimal... Read more

This week i have a .NET 3.5 WPF course by the good people of U2U. One of the most interesting new things is Data Binding.   A short introduction: Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF; formerly Avalon) introduces a profound new way to develop user interfaces for rich clients. For the first time, WPF separates design of the user interface from the code. This separation means that, much like ASP.NET, your markup is typically in one... Read more

There’s a lot of talk these days about key performance indicators (KPIs). They are the backbone of scorecards and dashboards, which have become an irresistible way for organizations to present performance information to executives and staff. Unfortunately, BI developers seem to focus more on creating visual metaphors (dials, gauges, arrows, etc.) than understanding what constitutes a good KPI that delivers long-term value to the organization.   Part of the problem is that people use the... Read more