If you are in Business Intelligence and work for a big organisation, you've might, once or twice, seen a "magic" Excel spreadsheet that holds some valuable data for a few key reports. This data is called a reference master data. Typically it's a relatively static...

For the last few weeks, I've been teaching myself how to use Qlik Sense, using a combination of tutorials, documentation, and experimentation. When it comes to building your first app, the first hurdle is finding some data to visualise. Many of the Qlik Sense...

We are big fans of Trifacta. We’ve even written about what’s new with Trifacta before. Trifacta is always releasing new features and bug fixes so this blog covers the latest updates in the release of Trifacta Enterprise Wrangler Version 4 dated 03.03.2017. What’s new...

Once I felt that I had a handle on creating standard visualisations in Qlik Sense, the first thing I wanted to know was how I could incorporate the vast array of extensions that are available out there into my apps. One of my favourite types of a chart is a Sankey...

In my first Qliksense blog, I announced that I was taking on a project to focus my learning process, and I’m going to share a few of the useful things I learned along the way as I constructed my first demo app. The data I used to build my app comprised a cohort of...

Layouts can mean the difference between someone having a pleasant reading experience and someone not bothering to read your infographic. A big reason for using an infographic is to make information more readable and accessible. If you don't implement a good layout,...

Early decisions to make. So far we have covered when to make an infographic and things to know before you start. In this blog, we will cover the next step of the process; branding and planning decisions. If you don't have any branding already in place, you may want to...

Triggers in Microsoft SQL Server Triggers are pieces of code which are automatically executed on the occurrence of an event in the database. They can be a good solution for a whole range of problems. However, many SQL Server users choose to avoid using triggers as...

This blog follows on from Infographics Guide (Part 1) which covered when you should use an infographic, and when you shouldn't. Things you'll need. There are certain things almost all infographics will have. The most important two are purpose and target. You need...

What is an infographic? Infographic is defined by www.dictionary.com as "A visual presentation of information in the form of a chart, graph, or other image accompanied by minimal text, intended to give an easily understood overview, often of a complex subject". In...

I recently discovered a free service that can provide SSL certificates. It's called Let's Encrypt and in the correct use cases, it's a great tool to have in your developer's arsenal. At this point, I should point out a few things worth knowing. The certificate has a...

Auto scaling is an old selling point for AWS and cloud services in general, but a surprising number of production applications don't auto-scale. There are several legitimate reasons for this: Applications have a very fixed input/output and have no reason to scale....

Here at Optimal, we are currently working on some microservice management software. Part of my work on this project has been implementing some database classes for message brokers to interact with. So far I’ve implemented classes for DynamoDB and MongoDB: two NoSQL...

A new version (version 4) of ODE is now available for download! ODE, Optimal Data Engine, is our open source product for building a Data Vault. Anyone can download it, install on their instance of SQL Server and develop a Data Vault of their own. New features include:...

Happy International Womens day everyone. A day when we collectively point a lens on diversity, equality of representation, pay parity, chauvinism, oppression and the many other challenges facing women today in 2017 while creating a path for future generations. So this...

Recently I have been doing some research tasks which naturally require a lot of Googling. A recurring theme of these tasks was frustration. Frustration from finding the same 5 results over and over, results with only one or none of the topics you are looking for, or...

Recently I have had the chance to muck around with the new DotNet Core in AWS Lambda. Here is a few things I have learnt and can hopefully save you the time and trouble of struggling over. DotNet Core Version AWS Love keeping AWS Lambda on annoyingly old versions of...

I went to the movie Hidden Figures last week, a lovely story distilling complex issues of a time - primarily racism and chauvinism - on a backdrop of high technology and NASA's quest to beat the Russians into space (and onto the Moon) enabling them to look past their...