|
"Masters of Logic Puzzles I"
Consider this :
Three Masters of Logic wanted to find out who was the wisest amongst them. So they turned to their Grand Master, asking to resolve their dispute.
"Easy," the old sage said. "I will blindfold you and paint either red, or blue dot on each man's forehead. When I take your blindfolds off, if you see at least one red dot, raise your hand. The one, who guesses the color of the dot on his forehead first, wins."
And so it was said, and so it was done. The Grand Master blindfolded the three contestants and painted red dots on every one. When he took their blindfolds off, all three men raised their hands as the rules required, and sat in silence pondering.
Finally, one of them said: "I have a red dot on my forehead."
How did he guess?
|
Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache anywhere in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache's existence and location online. For more, click here. 
BSP's NJ office has sent a Geocache to our HQ in Chicago, and you can help get it there!
To Track Progress click Here! |
|
Join COGNOiSe.com, the largest independent, worldwide FREE IBM Cognos Support Community.
Access our
|
|
| Greetings!
Welcome to this month's BSP Newsletter. We have a lot of educational content this month, along with some great tips and tricks and other IBM Cognos related information as always! And remember, we enjoy hearing your suggestions regarding the content you'd like to see. Please e-mail us at Newsletter@brightstarpartners.com if you have a topic you'd like to see discussed in future newsletters. |
BRIGHTSTAR PARTNERS SPONSORS PERFORMANCE 2009 | |
BrightStar Partners is excited to be the sole Gold Sponsor of the Performance 2009 event on December 3rd in Chicago. As part of the IBM Cognos global road show, Performance 2009 is the one-day event that provides practical knowledge and critical insights to help you better evaluate, use, and support IBM Cognos Business Intelligence and Performance Management software. Attendees will all see the latest BI and Performance Management capabilities in action. You'll hear from customers, IBM Cognos, and partners like BrightStar Partners about the best ways to optimize your solutions. And you'll have the opportunity to network with industry thought leaders and product specialists, as well as peers and colleagues from your own region.
Whether you work for a large enterprise or a midsize company, if you want to see the very latest in reporting, analysis, dashboards, scorecards, budgeting, planning, forecasting, and more, don't miss Performance 2009.
Please stop by our booth to learn more about how BrightStar Partners is making companies around the world more effective and efficient with their IBM Cognos solutions.
To register for the event click here
Check the agenda of the event here |
| CONTENT MANAGEMENT FOR IBM COGNOS |
New Solution Enables Customers to Manage and Archive IBM Cognos Content!
With the ever increasing regulations placed on preserving and archiving content such as financial reports, the impact on an IBM Cognos environment can be substantial. Archiving report outputs within Cognos can result in an ever-growing Content Store database that over time can negatively impact performance. In addition, there are limitations on the number of outputs that can be stored.
Integrated Archive Management was designed to address sizing and space issues, as well as content preservation. This incredibly powerful, yet straightforward and transparent solution can be up and running in a matter of minutes.
| |
| USING REPORTS AND PACKAGES AS DATA SOURCES IN COGNOS 8 |
 By Randy Brumbaugh, Consultant
C8 transformer has the ability to use Reports and/or Packages as a data source. The data source can also be any of the original types from the earlier iterations of the tool. BSP Proven Practices suggest that a unique namespace be created for the Transformer process.
Model - Packages as Data Source:
To use the Framework Manager model as a data source the model must published. Once the model is published the information that is available depends on what type of security is used within the organization.
- Within the package individual queries can used as structural queries, dimensional queries or measure queries.
- The queries can also contain calculations that will be used as measures in the cube. Some calculations may not fit into this scenario depending on what type of output is required.
- These queries can be used numerous times for different dimensions (if need be) by renaming the query.
- A package can contain namespaces for analysis queries and or relational queries.
- When an analysis query is being used the dimensions and attributes can be imported.
- When a dimension is used, it cannot be a data source but must be inserted as a dimension.
Reports as Data Sources:
Reports are basically flat in a sense that they do not drill up or down as well as slice and dice. To make a report capable of all of the above first create the report then use it as a data source in a Transformer model.
-
The report can have any type of fact information such as sales, costs, profit etc.
-
The fact data will be aggregated to a hierarchy that will allow for a drill-up and drill-down.
-
That does not mean the report has to have that but for slicing and dicing it should.
-
The report will need to contain the attributes that will link to the dimensions.
-
If the reports contain a prompt, the prompt will need to be answered before it is used as a data source.
-
Ultimately, the prompt should become a dimension that can be filtered using the drill-up or drill-down technique.
Building Transformer Model:
The best way to build the Transformer model would be to combine both packages and reports. The package will have the basic query information that can be used for dimensions. This will allow for a quicker build time. The reports will contain the fact (measure) information that will link to the dimensional data.
The data source properties can be located on any DNS as long as access has been granted. Typically the DNS would be previously defined by the network admin and the Cognos admin teams for all cube builds.
-
The initial step would be to create the cube with the information that is required for analysis purposes.
-
The following steps would be to create the data source connection information that can be found in the cube properties.
-
The package information contains the package name and the Cognos Connection location where the package will be published.
-
The data source connection and package publication can be handled through the publish wizard.
For detailed version of the article with screen shots, click here |
| IBM COGNOS ARTICLES OF INTEREST |
 About Earthquakes......
- The cause of earthquakes was stated correctly in 1760 by British engineer John Michell, one of the first fathers of seismology, in a memoir where he wrote that earthquakes and the waves of energy that they make are caused by "shifting masses of rock miles below the surface".
- It is estimated that there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year. 100,000 of those can be felt, and 100 of them cause damage.
- Most earthquakes happen along the edges of Earth's big plates.
- The world's deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1556 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. These dwellings collapsed during the earthquake, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly earthquake struck in Tangshan, China, where more than 250,000 people were killed.
- The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska on Good Friday, March 28, 1964
- The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960.
- Before electronics allowed recordings of large earthquakes, scientists built large spring-pendulum seismometers in an attempt to record the long-period motion produced by such quakes. The largest one weighed about 15 tons. There is a medium-sized one three stories high in Mexico City that is still in operation.
- The average rate of motion across the San Andreas Fault Zone during the past 3 million years is 56 mm/yr (2 in/yr). This is about the same rate at which your fingernails grow. Assuming this rate continues, scientists project that Los Angeles and San Francisco will be adjacent to one another in approximately 15 million years.
- The East African Rift System is a 50-60 km (31-37 miles) wide zone of active volcanics and faulting that extends north-south in eastern Africa for more than 3000 km (1864 miles) from Ethiopia in the north to Zambezi in the south. It is a rare example of an active continental rift zone, where a continental plate is attempting to split into two plates which are moving away from one another.
- Moonquakes ("earthquakes" on the moon) do occur, but they happen less frequently and have smaller magnitudes than earthquakes on the Earth. It appears they are related to the tidal stresses associated with the varying distance between the Earth and Moon. They also occur at great depth, about halfway between the surface and the center of the moon.
- The hypocenter of an earthquake is the location beneath the earth's surface where the rupture of the fault begins. The epicenter of an earthquake is the location directly above the hypocenter on the surface of the earth.
- The Wasatch Range, with its outstanding ski areas, runs North-South through Utah, and like all mountain ranges it was produced by a series of earthquakes. The 386 km (240-mile)-long Wasatch Fault is made up of several segments, each capable of producing up to a M7.5 earthquake. During the past 6,000 years, there has been a M6.5+ about once every 350 years, and it has been about 350 years since the last powerful earthquake, which was on the Nephi segment.
- There were 46 major earthquakes around the globe from 1900-1949. That makes the annual average of 1.08 in the first half of 20th century. However, between 1950 and 1999 an annual average of 1.64 earthquakes had occurred worldwide. That is 82 earthquakes were reported worldwide. Another interesting statistic is between 2000 and 2004, 10 major earthquakes have been reported worldwide at an average of 2.5 earthquakes per year. You must have realized the magnitude and the frequency of the earthquake is increasing every year.
- Florida and North Dakota have the smallest number of earthquakes in the United States.
- When the Chilean earthquake occurred in 1960, seismographs recorded seismic waves that traveled all around the Earth. These seismic waves shook the entire earth for many days! This phenomenon is called the free oscillation of the Earth.
- The interior of Antarctica has icequakes which, although they are much smaller, are perhaps more frequent than earthquakes in Antarctica. The icequakes are similar to earthquakes, but occur within the ice sheet itself instead of the land underneath the ice.
- From 1975-1995, there were only four states that did not have any earthquakes. They were: Florida, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wisconsin.
- 4 out of 5 of the world's earthquakes take place along the rim of the Pacific Ocean, a zone called the Pacific Ring of Fire.
|
|
|
