Perspective

Data Prep and Data Harmonization Before you slap a visualization tool on top of data, it has to be organized.  If things are organized, you can ask yourself questions about the aggregate data set. Such as when I ask my four year old daughter to “count how many striped socks daddy has”.  She promptly opens […]

Is Building a Data Warehouse Still a Career Trap? If you look over the last 20 years or so, data warehouses are well known as a fertile place to wreck your career. And yet, in the corporate word it’s only a matter of time before someone says it: “We need to build a data warehouse.”

What is Data Warehouse ETL? Data Warehouse ETL is a series of processes that: Extract data from across an organization Transform data to facilitate consumption Load data a relational or non-relational data store All for the purpose of facilitating business intelligence, reporting, analysis, data science, and other activities. Let’s Unpack This:  Problem: It’s common business

Data Wrangling: Navigating Mapping “Just give me the raw data, Bob.” That could be the catchphrase of the year. The days of cube reporting, locked down databases and IT generally holding data hostage are over. In its place, non-coders are taking MS Power BI, Tableau, Spotfire (pick your poison) to new levels.  Just give us

When I say Zombies – I Mean (Enterprise and Legacy) Software Zombies This is a first. I really try to never write about startup culture and entrepreneurship stuff. It’s my opinion, but there are already enough “gurus” blathering on and on about what it takes to be a start-up champion. We sell our software, K3,

Here is the truth. In software sales, it literally pays to lie. That’s the number one thing you need to know when you are buying. Whether you are buying ERP software, HR software or something else core to your business, you must watch out for the traps. Here’s the two big kinds of software lies:

Terrible Ideas and AI Sometime around the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world hatched one of the absolute worst ideas mankind ever had: How do I get a human being to behave like a machine? It’s not one of those loud soapbox type ideas. Rather, it’s one of those quiet, pernicious, ideas that cut

Digital Transformation is a Styrofoam Burger Have you heard this term thrown around? A term this vague, all-encompassing, and unspecific should trigger your B.S. Spidey senses. Digital Transformation (DT) is a great example of marketing, consultants, and the blind virus incubator of the internet run amok. At its core, the idea was spawned to help

Fixed Width to Tableau with K3 Here is a Riddle for the Ages:  I provide eternal life to IBM and am the original gangster of big data. What am I? If you guessed Watson…please see yourself out. Love ‘em or hate ‘em mainframes are here to stay. Actually, scratch that…no one loves mainframes, but there

Warning: Data may be messier than it appears. Tableau did a great thing for its community by creating the Tableau Superstore. The Superstore is a sample data set users tap into as a common starting point for feature requests, customer support, training, experimenting, etc. Much like high school chemistry however, it makes necessary assumptions to