Note: You can listen to the blog post on the video or read the blog post.
Hello and Welcome.
I am Esther.
I am Peters A I Assistant to create voice overs.
Peter is using me as his Assistant, because men prefer to listen to a woman’s voice.
I will simply read Peters blog posts, so that you have a choice of reading the blog post, or listening to my voice.
Hello and welcome Gentlemen.
I’d like to say thank you very much, for coming along and listening to my latest blog post.
As you know, I have been banned off LinkedIn for some years.
Now that I am back, I will post items that I think are of general interest to people in what is now loosely called the data community.
One area I have an interest is the cost of E T L development for MicroStrategy users.
Let me tell you a story.
You will find this very amusing.
In ninety ninety three, I was involved in selling Metaphor Computer Systems, Data Interpretation System, to Coles Myer in Australia.
Coles Myer was a big I B M customer, and they are the largest revenue generating company in Australia.
In nineteen ninety three, Coles Myer had about twenty five percent of the retail market in Australia.
We tried really hard on the sale.
We left no stone unturned.
Eventually Coles Myer made a terrible mistake and bought I R I Express.
They would try and build their reports on the top of I R I Express for the next three years.
Of course, I R I Express would never, ever, scale to meet their needs.
So in nineteen ninety seven they finally abandoned I R I Express.
I made a number of calls again, to try for this next project.
We did not get considered.
They went with Oracle and PRISM Solutions for the E T L software.
They went for MicroStrategy on the front end because that was the only product in the market that would scale to their needs.
I stayed in touch with Coles Myer all those years, just in case an opportunity ever came up, where I could get some work.
The whole time I was promoting my version of E T L software to Coles Myer.
But being Coles Myer, they went for PRISM Solutions software, and that’s fair enough.
About twelve months later, I became the Professional Services Manager for Ardent Software, when they bought PRISM Solutions.
One of my first calls was back with Coles Myer to inform them I was now responsible for their account.
The gentlemen in question had the first name of Bernie.
Given I was now responsible for their E T L development team, Bernie decided to show me their data models.
These were printed and laid out on a large conference room table.
I walked into the room and took one look at the model and said, quote, oh my God Bernie, what have you done, end quote.
Bernie said, quote, that does not sound good, end quote.
I looked over the models and could instantly tell that they had a physical table for each level of each multi-level dimension.
I could also see they had a physical table for each level of each summary level fact table.
They had HUNDREDS of tables in this data model.
I said to Bernie.
You have a physical table for each level of each dimension, and each level of each fact table, and so you must have PRISM mappings for each table.
Bernie said yes, my presumption was correct.
I said to him, quote, my God Bernie, I have been coming here telling you for five years, that you have one physical table for each dimension and each summary level fact table, and you partition those tables on a level column. That way you only have one mapping, one piece of E T L, for each, end quote.
His response was hilarious.
It was, quote, yes, I know you told me that, but I didn’t believe you, end quote.
I asked Bernie, who told him to develop his E T L and data models this way.
He said MicroStrategy told him this was how it should be done.
I checked across many MicroStrategy accounts.
Sure enough, that was the advice MicroStrategy gave to accounts.
The reason is simple enough.
If MicroStrategy can get a client to adopt putting each level of each dimension, and each level of each different fact table, into a different physical table, there are no other products, that can read that data model.
You will be a MicroStrategy customer for ever, if you design your tables like that.
Don’t get me wrong.
MicroStrategy is my number two favourite end user software behind Meta5.
They did a great job with aggregate level navigation.
They are the only company that implemented aggregate level navigation properly.
But the underlying data model can be multi-level tables the same way that Metaphor designed.
And those tables can be read by any B I product.
So, all jokes aside.
There are a lot of MicroStrategy accounts in the world today.
Almost all of them could reduce their cost of E T L development, and support, if they switch to see T L, which is already multi-level aware.
Let me give you the simplest of examples.
In a MicroStrategy implementation you have a day dimension, a week dimension, a month dimension, a quarter dimension, and a year dimension.
That’s five dimension tables.
That’s five pieces of E T L to maintain.
In my B I 4 ALL models you have one table.
T D 0 0 0 5.
This is a multi level table that contains all levels of time.
It then presents out V M day view, V M week view, V M month view, V M quarter view and V M year view.
One table.
One piece of E T L. .
Five views.
When you start to multiply that out across the number of dimensions and fact tables you have today, the savings a MicroStrategy customer can get from changing to see T L are very large.
I have even tested keeping the multiple tables, and using a union view over them, to be able to replace existing E T L with see T L. .
It works on S Q L Server.
So, it will most certainly work on Oracle, Teradata, and D B 2.
So, if you are a MicroStrategy customer?
And you would like to cut your costs of E T L development and support?
Download see T L and give the old C plus plus dimension table processing a run for your money.
You will find that you can replace your old E T L for pennies.
Your future E T L will cost less, and be more reliable.
It is frustrating to me that MicroStrategy did this.
But you can’t blame Michael Saylor for wanting to lock in his clients, if he can.
That’s just good business.
Until your customers find out you did it.
See T L will cut the cost of E T L development and support for MicroStrategy customers.
Especially those customers using hand coded SQL for your E T L systems.
Now.
I hope you found this blog post interesting and informative.
If you are a MicroStrategy customer and you want to reduce your costs of E T L development?
You are one click away from getting started.
Thank you very much for your time and attention.
I really appreciate that.
Best Regards.
Esther.
Peters A I Assistant.
