ArchBeat

"BI is about Integration, not isolation, " says Jeff McQuigg. "BI is about gaining additional benefits when two pieces are put together and producing a third piece. It is about broad based information analysis – not isolated datasets"

"Isn't it curious," writes Billy Cripe, "that we reference items differently depending on where they're located. We need to know the structure of data first before we can even think about trying to reach it. Web pages have URLs, DB Records have primary keys, filing cabinet files have a physical location, you and I have a postal address. That makes it awfully hard to combine data sets, perform meaningful comparisons or combine expertise with the confidence that we're not leaving out the most important information available simply because it is addressed differently."

"Encouraged by hypervisor vendors, the confusion between virtualization and Cloud Computing is rampant," writes William Vambenepe. "In the industry, the term 'virtualization' (and its corollary, 'virtual machine') is used in so many different ways that it has lost all usefulness. "

Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman discusses the Code Templates feature introduced in Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, and illustrates how to use the feature to create mappings that leverage Oracle and non-Oracle ETL functionality.

"As an enterprise architect, I would like to dismiss the idea that innovation is the enemy of architecture>" writes Jon. H. Ayre. "This cannot possibly be the case, and if it were there would be no place for architecture in an organisation, as innovation is clearly essential to its continued success."

"I think there is some evidence for the proposition that Architecture and Innovation don't actually collaborate as well in practice as they ought to in theory," writes Veryard. "This does not necessarily mean a critique of Architecture as such, but a critique of current 'best practices.'"

"There's long been something fairly unsatisfying about the relationship that enterprise architecture has had with the business side of most organizations," writes Dion Hinchcliffe. "Recently there's a growing realization that traditional enterprise architecture as its often practiced today might be broken in some important way. What might be wrong and how to fix it are the questions du jour."

"One of the flexibilities of the BI Server," writes Venkatakrishnan Janakiraman, "is its ability to fine-tune certain sql queries being fired back to the database. One such example is its ability to enforce certain outer joins when required."