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Zen and the art of database model maintenance
So there you are having created a work of beauty in Sparx Enterprise Architect that models all of your databases, and then the fly lands in the ointment. There's a new version of "stuff" coming down the pipeline and you need to update the model or things are...
Checking the File Path from Database in PowerShell
On one of my recent projects I was analysing my customer's data for migration. Their legacy application could handle documents. They were stored on the organisation's shared folder, and the file path was recorded in the database with the rest of data. As a part of the...
The best lockdown baking recipes
The nation has been hit by a baking craze! Lockdown gave some of us more time to do some of the simple things in life, like baking, and, if you were lucky enough to get flour and yeast you could create some delicious treats! I've always enjoyed baking, so loved...
Snowflake and Qlik: End-to-End BI Solution
Recently I watched a webinar organised by Snowflake, it was called "Data Warehouse Automation, Ingestion and Industry Leading Analytics with Snowflake and Qlik". In the past I could never find time for webinars, and it's amazing how life can give you opportunities to...
Being social while social distancing
The world has been social distancing for some time now, and will be for a bit longer, depending where you live. To help put off or at least mitigate going stir crazy I thought I would share what I have been doing to keep up some sort of social life. Before the lock...
Our How To blogs
We do cool sh!t with data and over the years we have shared a lot of blogs to help you do cool sh!t with data too. If you want to jump right in and see if we have something that piques your interest here are all our how to blogs. If you...
Free ETL tools in 2020
Traditionally business intelligence is an enterprise solution, as only big businesses have multiple sources that require integration and analysis. It is assumed that the rest are small fishes that could be able to analyse their data with simpler accessible tools or...
SAS Utilities: cleanwork
When a user starts and runs code in a SAS session, a number of temporary folders and files are created in the SASWork and SASUtil locations. If that session completed and exits normally these folders and files are removed, however some SAS sessions exit abnormally,...
1080 By The Numbers
If you have lived in New Zealand for long enough, I am sure you would have heard of the poison 1080, used by the Department of Conservation (DOC) as a form of pest control. 1080 can be used in bait stations or by airdrop, which is used for many of the remote and hard...
Keeping your team connected when they’re working remotely
Lockdown started on the March 26 here in New Zealand, and following the Prime Minister's announcement on April 20th, we're looking at just an extra 2 business days in Level 4, before we move to Level 3 after the ANZAC long weekend. Level 3 means that...
Adobe equivalent Free Open Source Software (Pt2)
In part two of my Adobe equivalent Free Open Source Software (FOSS) blog I thought I would look at the video editing pipeline and find some free alternatives for your video editing needs. You can read Part One which covers Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign here....
Difference between ETL and CDC
Reporting and analytics computations are usually very resource-consuming, therefore they are never executed on the same server where the crucial business application is running. Instead, data is copied into dedicated servers to be dissected and studied for insights....
Keeping your brain busy while in lock down
Many places all over the world are currently in self-isolation mode in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In New Zealand, lock down started on Thursday March 26, which means that some people are able to work from home. At OptimalBI, we are working from home and on the...
Check out our new website!
Woohoo we've got a new website! If you're reading this blog you're already on it and we reckon you should click a few extra buttons than you were planning to and go check it out... Data really does make anything possible, and we're here to help you harness data...
Planning for the COVID-19 Pandemic at OptimalBI
We find ourselves in unprecedented times. All across the globe the impact of COVID-19 is being felt, it’s heart-breaking reading the stories of loss, the impact on societies, businesses and individuals as a result of measures put in place to restrict the momentum of...
Building Services and Applications for Generic Data
One of the things many developers love about MongoDB and other NoSQL databases is the ability to store flexible objects in their native format. When you walk around the office singing its praises, experienced developers chime in and tell you that this is a quick path...
What is data literacy and why should you care?
You might have heard this term thrown about a bit recently. Perhaps it's because you've heard politicians referring to it when discussing educational reform, or you've noticed how your job has you doing more with spreadsheets than you did five years ago. What ever...
What is algorithmic bias and why should you care?
What is algorithmic bias? A systematic error in computer algorithms which leads to unfair outcomes and giving privileges to one of the groups of users over all others. An algorithm is a set of instructions designed to perform a specific task. This can be a simple...