Crystal Reports vs. SSRS: Multi-view reports

In the world of Business Intelligence, there are two competing forces in the area of reporting: Crystal Reports and SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services). Both are established products and both continue fighting for the same niche, using different strategies. Many other fancy tools exist,  but very can do what they do.

In this entry, I will talk about one important feature that you might want your reporting software to do: creating multiple views of the same data. Who can do it better?

Crystal Reports file versioning with... SharePoint?

Problem: You need to share Crystal Report files with your team and all you use is a Windows network folder, which might even be a mapped drive. No matter how easy Windows folders are, they're a great idea that few people like to use. The preferred way to share files continues to be an e-mail attachment. Even with all the unintended hiccups such as the missing attachment, or knowing which file is really the latest one, or having to unzip a bunch of files, people still gravitate toward that because it seems quicker. I believe another reason why people continue to e-mail files over and over could be that there's a sense of accountability. You can always see when you sent your attachment. So in essence, e-mailing files serves as some type of poor man's version control.

How Many Hours Old are You? Calculating with SQL.

Do you like to feel the inexorable passing of time? People wish they were older until they reach 21, and then they wish they were younger. Well, if you don't like that feeling, it's because you're measuring it wrong. You should be measuring your age in hours. Then you will get a different feeling. Not the warm and fuzzies, but more of a feeling of incredulity. You won't believe that your age in hours is such a short timespan. There's something to make you feel young.

So, how old do you think you are, in hours?

Visualizing Travel data in Tableau

Tableau has made a name for itself partly by using the freemium business model. This is what vendors do to get you to use the product. In the case of Tableau, their platform allows you to use a free version of the product with the catch that you must save to the cloud for all to see. Sounds like a good trade-off.

So I went ahead and collected data from https://travel.trade.gov/, which by the way, is in serious need of a design makeover. Sorry, but just calling it like I see it.

Telling The Story with CTE's

I can divide the history of my knowledge of SQL in two ages, before and after Common Table Expressions (CTE's). I shake my head in disbelief when I think of all the times I could have used CTE's and used subqueries instead. To think that many years ago I was in a conversation and I said "I don't like subqueries" but didn't know there was a better way. I was still new with SQL and I found a subquery like a hole to another dimension. But the skill of SQL seemed to be measured in the ability to manage multiple nested subqueries so I had to learn the hard way. Having the mind of a developer, I am more interested in being able to make sense of what the query is doing based on its readability.

Book review: The Phoenix Project

The full title of this book is The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, and it was authored by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford. This book is a story of the difficult transformation of a company's Information Technology department, and how they are able to go from an outdated, inefficient model of IT management, to being a critical part of the business, by beating the odds and by being knowledgeable and resourceful.

SSRS vs PowerBI at SQL Saturday Tampa

I attended SQL Saturday Tampa on February 24, 2018. If you've never been to a SQL Saturday event, probably your first reaction is to think why would you give up your favorite day just for the sake of work? But it's not like that at all. It is a dynamic experience, and depending on where it is, it can be very rewarding.

My only recommendation (and that goes for any conference) is that you go early and get your registration figured out. When you go early, you can plan out your day and also have more opportunities to meet people, not to mention catch the earlier sessions. But this is something I learned the hard way.

Youtube Parental Controls

This post is really about nothing. What I mean by that is that Youtube (a Google company) has nothing in regards to parental control. But they shouldn't feel alone in this, since many major content providers seem to have put families at the bottom of their priority list. The average family-friendly feature is simply a button that can be interpreted as "Click this to activate a simple filter for content by family members". I could write different posts, one for each provider: Netflix, Apple, Google, Amazon, but today I will stick with Youtube.

Animating a Hurricane Forecast

It's hurricane season in Florida, and with the impending threat of hurricane Irma, people are fixated on the forecasts.

One idea I always had around these times was to create my own hurricane tracker, but what I want to track is how much the forecast deviates from the actual path. This content is hard to find. I don't think any weather service would be happy to share how their forecasts were off. In fact, even if the forecast is correct, at the end of the day people don't seem to care much. But I am curious to see if forecasts are mostly accurate or what they missed.

SSRS. Dataset or View? Pros and cons.

In the last few months I've been using the tool SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), which was Microsoft's answer to Crystal Report. It uses Visual Studio and SQL Server as a way to publish report files as web pages.

A dataset is the "heart" of an SSRS report. It is simply a query that you run from the report. In many ways it's similar to running a view in SQL, in the sense that the query may join multiple tables, use parameters, use common table expressions (CTE's) and almost every function that a query can do.

When is it time to change your logo?

This topic is more about graphic design, even though I don't work in graphic design anymore. A logo is an important part of a business and at some point it has to go through a redesign. I see that even to this date (2016), IBM has not changed its logo, and yes, it is in dire need of a refresh!

The strange universe of the movie Tomorrowland.

The teaser for the movie Tomorrowland looked very enticing. It was a like a sneak peek into a reimagined utopia of technology. I was looking forward to it and couldn't wait until it came out.

Spoiler alert. If you haven't watched the movie, stop now so I don't ruin it for you.