Have a look at our Professional Services offerings here.
View our Implementation-Based Product offerings here.
Join COGNOiSe.com, the largest independent, worldwide FREE IBM Cognos Support Community by clicking here.
Cognos, an IBM Company, becomes a BSP Customer. See here for more information. |
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Welcome to this month's BSP Newsletter. We appreciate all of the great feedback we've received on the newsletters, and this month in addition to our discussions on IBM Cognos FPM ( IBM Cognos Planning / IBM Cognos TM1) and IBM Cognos PM ( IBM Cognos BI), we have included a few additional tips and tricks per your requests.
As always, we enjoy hearing your suggestions regarding the content you'd like to see. Please e-mail us if you have a topic you'd like to see discussed in future newsletters. |
Who is BrightStar Partners? Get to Know Us!
BrightStar Partners is a Performance Management consulting and software firm dedicated to partnering with our clients to drive superior information solutions. Through the combination of the best people and the use of best in class technology, we at BrightStar Partners help our clients deliver Reporting, Analysis, Dashboarding, Planning and Consolidation solutions that drive true business value.
Through our vast implementation experience, we have been able to identify common needs of our customers and opportunities to help them be more successful with their technical solutions. With this experience, we have developed multiple software applications that will drive quick ROI and allow your resources to concentrate on delivering value to your business community, not managing the current environment.
- Professional Services and Training - As an IBM Cognos partner since our inception, BSP has a long tenure implementing Cognos BI, Financial Performance Management, Performance Applications, ETL and Data Warehousing solutions.
- Implementation-Based Software - As a distinguished member of the Powered by IBM Cognos program and as a Gold Technology Partner, BSP provides implementation-based solutions that extend existing IBM Cognos Performance Management environments. We focus on easy to use applications that add tremendous value to technology and business users alike.
- CPM Communities - BSP is the owner and operator of the largest worldwide, independent and FREE CPM communities on the web. Our portfolio includes COGNOiSe.com and many other communities designed to allow customers around the globe collaborate on asking and answering the tough questions and challenges we face each day in rolling out and maintaining successful deployments.
And don't miss the opportunity to meet some of the faces behind the name when BrightStar Partners is featured in an upcoming episode of The Economic Report on Business Performance Management (BPM). Our segment will be aired on various business networks like Fox Business Network, CNN Headline News, and 18 other regional news networks in the coming weeks (stay tuned for dates). Through a series of visuals and interviews, Greg Gumbel, the show's host, will take viewers through a journey of what BPM means and how it's changing the landscape at companies around the world.
So if you find yourself in need of proven practice advice, assistance with your deployment, software to streamline your time and return tremendous efficiencies and ROI, or just an answer to a quick question, think BrightStar Partners! |
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Turn Your Remaining 2008 Budget Dollars Into Big Gains and Become the Next Success Story
 Spotlighted on the main stage at this year's IBM Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas, BSP's Powered by IBM Cognos solutions are gaining tremendous adoption rates and generating amazing results. With a complete solution and overwhelming return on investment (ROI) track record, find out how you can turn a small investment into very large gains. The average ROI experienced in the first twelve months by customers of MetaManager, our first of the now many Powered by IBM Cognos offerings, is well over 100%. Learn why Creativity Inc, our latest success story, was highlighted on main stage at the recent IBM Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas. To view the success story, click here.
Our rapidly expanding product portfolio includes:
To find out more about any of these implementation-based solutions, view a product overview recording or to schedule a live product demonstration, visit us at BSP Software. | |
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A Faster Way to Get Row Counts in SQL Server
- Contributed by Greg Jungels, Senior Consultant -
When you are dealing with MILLIONS of records, it can take a while to get an accurate record count. Normally, you just perform a SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLENAME. This taxes the server tremendously and takes valuable time.
The other approach is to query the sys.partitions table. Below are examples of both statements, with their timings and processor load.
Common Way
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dbo.MATERIAL_DEX WITH (NOLOCK)
Cost: 100%
Time: 41 seconds
The time and cost above are given for comparison purpose.
Faster Way
SELECT SUM(Rows) AS Count
FROM sys.partitions
WHERE index_id < 2
AND OBJECT_NAME(object_id) = 'MATERIAL_DEX'
Cost: 0%
Time: nearly instantaneous.
Additional Information
The SELECT COUNT(*) does a full table scan to get the row count, whereas sys.partitions is a VIEW which is stored and managed as an object in the SQL Server Database Engine itself.
Index_id < 2 is used to include the heap and clustered indexes to get the row count. |
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IBM Cognos Articles of Interest
IBM Cognos 8.4
IBM Cognos 8.4 released. Read more by clicking here.
SUPPORTLINK
Interesting Supportlink articles:
OTHER ARTICLES
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Financial Performance Roadmap
After several months since the acquisition of Applix (TM1), and several years since acquiring Adaytum (Cognos Planning) and Frango (Controller), where is the road headed with the product set for the FPM side of Cognos, an IBM Company?
BrightStar Partners has had the unique opportunity to speak with many folks "in the know" on this topic; and we solidified our understanding at the recent IBM Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas at the end of October.
As we begin to formulate our FPM practice to support the product and process roadmap, please stay tuned for future newsletters and information on our website as we drive down this path together. | |
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Did You Know...
Using Oracle Databases with Cognos...
- You can use a proxy user created in Oracle that only has create session privileges to the database. By setting proper commands for the database connection, you can pass the credentials of the user connecting through Cognos Connection to the database.
- This approach allows for data-level security to be maintained at the database level.
- Additionally, Cognos connects to the database using a single, common ID but uniquely identifies each user by their proxy ID.
About US Presidents...
- In warm weather, 6th president of the United States John Quincy Adams customarily went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River before dawn.
- 9th U.S. president William Henry Harrison was inaugurated on a bitterly cold day and gave the longest inauguration speech ever. The new president promptly caught a cold that soon developed into pneumonia. Harrison died exactly one month into his presidential term, the shortest in U.S. history.
- John Tyler, 10th U.S. president, fathered 15 children (more than any other president)--8 by his first wife, and 7 by his second wife. Tyler was past his seventieth birthday when his 15th child was born.
- Sedated only by brandy, 11th president of the United States James Polk survived gall bladder surgery at the age of 17.
- 15th U.S. president James Buchanan is the only unmarried man ever to be elected president. Buchanan was engaged to be married once; however, his fiancée died suddenly after breaking off the engagement, and he remained a bachelor all his life.
- Often depicted wearing a tall black stovepipe hat, 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln carried letters, bills, and notes in his hat.
- 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson never attended school. His future wife, Eliza McCardle, taught him to write at the age of 17. (Bonus fact about Andrew Johnson: He only wore suits that he custom-tailored himself.)
- Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, died of throat cancer. During his life, Grant had smoked about 20 cigars per day.
- Both ambidextrous and multilingual, 20th president of the United States James Garfield could write Greek with one hand while writing Latin with the other.
- Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States, underwent a secret operation aboard a yacht to remove his cancerous upper jaw in 1893.
- The teddy bear nickname was derived from 26th U.S. president Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt's refusal to shoot a bear with her cub while on a hunting trip in Mississippi.
- William Taft, 27th president of the United States, weighed more than 300 pounds and had a special oversized bathtub installed in the White House.
- Warren Harding, 29th U.S. president, played poker at least twice a week, and once gambled away an entire set of White House china. His advisors were nicknamed the "Poker Cabinet" because they joined the president in his poker games.
- Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, had chronic stomach pain and required 10 to 11 hours of sleep and an afternoon nap every day.
- Herbert Hoover, 31st U.S. president, published more than 16 books, including one called Fishing for Fun-And to Wash Your Soul.
- 32nd president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt was related, either by blood or by marriage, to 11 former presidents.
- The letter "S" comprises the full middle name of the 33rd president, Harry S. Truman. It represents two of his grandfathers, whose names both had "S" in them.
- Military leader and 34th president of the U.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower loved to cook; he developed a recipe for vegetable soup that is 894 words long and includes the stems of nasturtium flowers as one of the ingredients.
- 40th president of the United States Ronald Reagan broke the so-called "20-year curse," in which every president elected in a year ending in 0 died in office.
- George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, and his wife Laura got married just three months after meeting each other.
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BrightStar Partners is committed to bringing you quality content month after month. If you have ideas for topics or if there is something you'd like to learn more about, please contact us and we'll do our best to address your request! We hope you enjoy this newsletter as much as we enjoy bringing it to you. |
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