Wednesday, May 27, 2009

BI Future - Microsoft Surface Demos

The post today is not much to write ... images and videos of the attached links, speak for themselves ... is a future increasingly close to the present that I want to have the pleasure of being alive to watch it! Microsoft Surface ... really promises because is a tool that will make the difference in the near future ... today, is still quite expensive to have the opportunity to try this tool, but I’ll be waiting to watch it in the first seat.

Watch the following videos ... the previous is obligatory... do not lose the opportunity to see what awaits us...

In leisure...



In the Ellit Model Management... and in a bookstore object recognition...


In patient consultation... and in Super Bowl security...

The future promisses...

Thursday, May 21, 2009

BI News - Data Mining for Terrorists Is Urged


I found an interesting article that I want to share with you about Data Mining.
The article was Published at "The New York Times" on October 7, 2008 by Eric Lichtblau

WASHINGTON — "A federal panel of policy makers and scientific experts urged a government-wide evaluation Tuesday of programs that sift through databases looking for clues on terrorism, to determine whether the programs are effective and legal. The federal government has made aggressive use of so-called data-mining tools since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as counterterrorism officials in many intelligence agencies have sought to analyze records on travel habits, calling patterns, e-mail use, financial transactions and other data to pinpoint possible terrorist activity.

The National Security Agency’s program for wiretapping terror suspects without warrants, the screening of suspicious airline passengers and the Pentagon’s ill-fated Total Information Awareness program, shut down by Congress in 2003 because of privacy concerns, have all relied on aspects of data mining.

But in a 352-page government study released on Tuesday, a committee of the National Research Council warned that successfully using these tools to deter terrorism “will be extremely difficult to achieve” because of legal, technological and logistical problems. It said a haphazard approach to using such tools threatened both Americans’ privacy rights and the country’s legitimate national security needs.

Mining through data patterns has been shown to work in commercial settings to predict what kind of toothpaste people may buy and what kind of movie they are likely to rent, or to detect casino card-counters or those engaged in credit card fraud.

But there is little evidence to confirm that the techniques work to actually find terrorists, despite the growing use in the last seven years, committee members said. Part of the problem, they said, is that the sample of known terrorists and actual attacks is so small that it is difficult to establish patterns of suspicious behavior.

The push to accumulate enormous amounts of information has also produced the risk of “a huge number of false leads” that could implicate people with no actual connections to terrorism, the committee said.

“More data does not mean better data,” said William J. Perry, the former defense secretary who was co-chairman of the panel, with Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering. "

Read entire article here

Sunday, May 17, 2009

BI Conference - Tech Ed 2009, SQL Server 2008 R2

Last year Microsoft shared information about Kilimanjaro at the company’s second annual Business Intelligence Conference, which kicked off on October 6 in Seattle. Kilimanjaro is set to include self-service analysis tools (codenamed “Gemini”) that Microsoft is saying will allow information workers to better “slice and dice data and create their own BI (business intelligence) applications and assets to share and collaborate on from within the familiar, everyday Microsoft Office productivity tools they already use.”

But last week at TechEd 2009 conferences, Microsoft announced SQL Server 2008 R2, which you might recall as previous code of Kilimanjaro. What? You thought Kilimanjaro was SQL Server 2010? Well, if you Google it, you'll see that many others think the same, and in fact there are announcements from very significant sources over the last few months talking about SQL Server 2010. So the information now is that there is no SQL Server 2010. "Never was." That the BI and self-service tools that were part of the release were actually the R2 release. That "Kilimanjaro" always referred to R2. The next full release of SQL Server will follow the R2 release by about 24-36 months. You can expect to see full release of R2 in the first half of next year - CTPs should follow later this year for testing.

I understand that Microsoft, like any company has to adapt its strategy when the world is currently in a big financial problem. In my opinion, Microsoft will be easier to convince customers to upgrade a SQL 2008 to SQL 2008 R2 than convince SQL 2008 to SQL 2010... well ... but starting to be many products, many names, many service packs, many cumulative packages, many functionalities ... truly begin to create confusion in people, that usually have great difficulty accept the change. I hope at least, that Microsoft does not change the format and design of the next version of Excel which is expected to have many more capabilities than Excel 2007. We shall see ... I am very curious about the improvements on the analytical tools and on the "Master Data Services"
Also, their advertising video is pretty funny (the introduction part). You can also sign up to receive notifications of the CTP. You can see it here:

Sunday, May 10, 2009

BI Resort - The BI Community

Finally I will present to my friends and to all those anonymous people that visit my blog, the BIResort comunity. I’m one of the founders of a BI community here in my beautiful country, Portugal! The community has the name of BI Resort, and we all wish to be a place to share knowledge, experiences and organize events about BI.

The founding members of this community work in Microsoft's partner companies, but could be many other professionals with an interest in "this world". The first step is taken, and we hope to have all your support to make this initiative a success. For my part, I promise to be present here for long… I have this blog for two years and have not lost my breath in this long journey.

If you feel curious to know something more about the Business Intelligence ... If you feel you can help someone to solve theoretical or practical problems ... if you had an experience in this area that could be shared... If you think it could be interesting bring to Portugal some communicators in this area ... if you think you can help make this world better ... then participate in this community. The doors are open to all! As we progressed, more details on objectives in the short, medium and long term will be shared with you.

For those who can create a blog in this community, contact me. It'll be an honor! I'll be waiting for your visit, not only here in my blog, but also in the www.BIResort.net
From Portugal to the rest of the world through this BI comunity!
For a better world!

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