Developing Business Intelligence Report using Open Source Technology

On Feb 11, 2010 Shaku Atre, Mark Gamble and Vazi Okhandiar presented a webinar on Interactive Analytics for Business analysts and developers to become familiar with using Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) to design and develop Interactive Financial Dashboards and Business Intelligence (BI) Applications with rich data visualizations.

BIRT is a top level project within Eclipse and is the fastest growing open source reporting technology with over 5 million downloads in the past 2 years. Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project.

The presentation consisted of following three parts:

• Part 1: Introduction to Business Analytics
• Part 2: Introduction to Actuate BIRT
• Part 3: Introduction to Eclipse BIRT

PART 1: Introduction to Business Analytics

Shaku Atre, Founder and President of the Atre Group, Inc., presented on an introduction to Interactive Analytics, the components of an interactive analytic application and the use of an interactive analytic application in a Financial Industry. The presentation included developing cost effective Business Intelligence (BI) application using Open Source, a difference between a "good" software and "bad" software and how BI applications have evolved over the decade.

Video Part 1: Introduction to Business Intelligence by Shaku Atre

PART 2: Introduction to Actuate's BIRT Reporting Tool

Mark Gamble, the Head of the Actuate Marketing Applications Team, included an overview of Actuate and an introduction to Actuate Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT). Mark Gamble also demonstrated the use of Actuate BIRT to develop various types of reports and dashboards for analyzing business data.

Video 2: Introduction to Actuate BIRT by Mark Gambel

Part 3: Introduction to Developing BI Application using Eclipse BIRT

Vazi Okhandiar, Founder of NR Computer Learning Center and a Vice President of Technology at mLogica, Inc, presented on the introduction to the BIRT Architecture, Eclipse BIRT installation and JDBC & MySQL configuration. Vazi also gave a live presentation illustrating how simple report can be created using Eclipse BIRT and MySQL.

Video 3: Introduction to Eclipse BIRT by Vazi Okhandiar

About the Presenters:
Shaku Atre
Shaku is a world-renowned expert on Business Intelligence and database technology. Shaku is the Founder and President of the Atre Group, Inc., and has written six, very successful books on database-related topics, which have been translated in many languages. She worked for IBM Germany, IBM World Trade Corp. in various capacities. She was an IT Partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Mark Gamble
Mark is the Head of the Actuate Marketing Applications team that builds and maintains reference Actuate applications. He joined Actuate in 1999 as a sales engineer in Detroit, supporting sales efforts for Actuate Version 3. With thorough knowledge of Actuate product capabilities and business applications, Mark emphasizes both technical and business benefits in his presentations. Depth of knowledge and engaging style make him a popular choice for live Actuate demonstrations.

Vazi Okhandiar, PMP, MCT, MBA, MSCS, BSEE

Vazi is an Executive Director at NR Computer Learning Center and a Vice President of Technology at mLogica, Inc. She has over 20 years of experience in consulting and providing training in IT Project Management, application architecture, design and web-based application development. She has worked for Toyota, General Motors (GM), Electronic Data System (EDS) and Computer Science Corporation (CSC).

5 Tips On How To Take Care Of Your Computer

1. Protect your computer from viruses, spyware and hackers by running an anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall. Run a complete virus and spyware scan on your computer at least once a week.

2. Do not install more than one anti-virus on the computer. When you have more than one anti-virus on your computer, they try to remove each other by classifying the other as a virus.

3. It is a good practice to enable the auto-update feature on the anti-virus software on a daily basis. This allows the computer to update the anti-virus definition file to protect the computer from being attached by the latest viruses. Make sure you schedule the update at a time when you will not using the computer.

4. Use Defragmentation option (Start Menu> Program> Accessories> System> Defragmentation), at least once a month to defragment files. This will reduce the clustering of files on your hard disk.

5. Use Disk Cleanup (Start Menu> Program> Accessories> System> Disk Cleanup) at least once a month to remove the temporary files from your computer.

Tips for Business Travelers: Secure Wi-Fi Connection

The Wi-Fi Zones, also known as hot spot, are now-a-days easily accessible by users in areas such as hotels, airports, coffee shops and other public areas. A Wi-Fi Zones, provides a user a convenient way of accessing Internet using a wireless equipped devices such as laptops. However, it is important to take precautions to secure your data, since a hacker can easily access the data on an unsecured device. This article will cover few guidelines that you can follow to protect your data when using your device in a Wi-Fi zone.

First of all, before using a wire less device, such as laptop, in a Wi-Fi zone, make sure it is a legitimate hot-spot. Hackers can use routers with familiar network name to capture users' log-in information to gain access to their private data. If you doubt the legitimacy of the Wi-Fi zone, then you are safer to not use your wireless device in the area.

Next, make sure that the firewall on your computer is turned-on and the Windows' file-sharing feature is turned off. The firewall, when turned on, prevents an unauthorized user from getting access to your network or computer until you give them the permission to connect to your computer. Where as, the file sharing feature, when turned off, prevents the authorized user to get access to your files on your computer.

To confirm that the firewall is on, go to the start button on your computer, select setting option, and then select the Control Panel from the drop down. In the Control Panel window, double click the Windows Firewall icon, which will pop up the Windows Firewall window. In the pop-up window, confirm that the firewall is turned-on. This will prevent an unauthorized user from accessing your computer.

To confirm that the file-sharing is turned off, select the the Exceptions Tab in the Windows Firewall window, and confirm that the "File and Printer Sharing" option in the Programs and Services is unchecked. This will prevent a user connected to your system from accessing your files on your computer.

In general, it is a good idea to turn off the Wi-Fi radio and any wireless adapter attached to your computer whenever you do not need to use the wireless device. If the Wi-Fi radio is left on, a hacker can easily access information on your laptop using a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections.

Finally, while you are in a Wi-fi zone, if you plan to make a financial transactions using an online Credit Card option, make sure that you are going through a secured website. A secured website's URL address always starts with https instead of http and a lock icon at the bottom-right corner of the browser.

Your Computer Security Starts By Using Strong Password

When connecting a computer to a network, you are taking a risk in having an unauthorized user connect to your computer and access your files. One of the basic security measure you can use to prevent a user from logging into your computer is to use a strong password. Following are some tips for creating a strong password:

• Use at least seven characters
• Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols (!@#$%^&*)
• Do not use a default password such as root, admin or dba
• Do not use common or simple words such as password, 09876 or 1234567
• Do not use name of a person or place that people might associate with you such as JohnJr or Disneyland
• Do not use the date of birth, place of birth, social security number or driver license number
• Do not write done the password anywhere that is accessible by others
• Save your password in a password protected file or in an encrypted form
• When updating your password, use a new password that is significantly different from the old password

Microsoft suggests 6 steps to build a strong password.

Microsoft Office 2007

Recently, I purchased Microsoft Office 2007 and installed it on my laptop. When I started Microsoft Word 2007, I was surprised. For last few years, I have been using Word 2003. Microsoft Word 2007 looks no-where close to Word 2003. The menu bar is Word 2007 has completely changed. So to learn Word 2007, I have decided to first created a Quick Reference Card with all the tabs and their options.

I would love to hear from those who have installed and already working Office 2007. Leave me a comment.