Cubegeek

New Year New Essbase

I bought myself a new server for Christmas. It's a Dell. I'm probably going to buy a new one every three months until I have a nice rack in my home office. I've grown tired of waiting for the guys at corporate to get the virtual lab working. I think I have a better chance of getting a little farm working that I have full access to.

The first task is done. I've got the AV and the network connected. As we speak I'm downloading Essbase 11. I'll follow Tim and the other Ace directors' instructions and put the damned thing together. 2009 is going to be a very deeply technical year for me. I'm just very happy in my job and feel like I've got lots of time and don't need to be such a careerist like I used to be. I can focus on getting deep into some technical matters.

What I'd really like to see is a good understanding, as I said before, of the Java interfaces. I have an old licensed copy of Dodeca around here somewhere. Maybe I'll play with that. But what I really expect to have a lot of fun with is generating a model library complete with fake data for various aspects of the energy industry. I'm so very pleased that my parent company is deep into the energy business, especially with the new acquisition of Piocon. I had a chance to work for Shell Services in Houston way back in the day and it was so cool to work with a company that had the resources to do things right. Same with Northwest Utilities. Back then I used to have to worry about shortcomings with the product. Now there are very few - it's more capable than most IT guy's imaginations - so we'll see if the Oracle engineers have done right by the great spirit of Essbase. I believe they have, which means the new Essbase is going to be all that. Match me up with the right company in energy and it's going to be delicious.

In that vein it will be interesting to see how these carbon management programs get going. I think that anybody who is serious about that is going to go through several generations of thinking their way through managing best practices. That's tailor made for Essbase EPM. Fingers crossed.

The Java Journey

I'm hedging a bit. As my company gets a bit more complex, it mathematically makes sense that I get further away from the mainstream hierarchy of the management team. I don't think it's the way anybody planned or that such matters are inevitable, but there was something in a press release I just read that made me itch - something about my parent company not being committed to organic growth. For the calendar year 2009 I don't think that there are going to be, say 4 or 5 hires in my region. So time spent trying to be a godlike manager might be time wasted. But all that's just an aside. The news is that I'm investing some time in learning Java.

For a database guy, there isn't a really good reason to know Java, especially if you do data management and architecture and tuning like I do. I'm a strong Perl and ksh scripter and I know more than enough to round out my skills. My greatest technical value lies in knowing something about when it's best to do things in relational vs ETL vs multidimensional performance-wise in systems that use all three technologies - especially in UNIX environments. Plus I know a thing or two about building multidimensional  models in just about every industry. That's good enough for a full professional career. But you know what? I'm not satisfied. I feel like I should master APIs so I can build super custom stuff as well as interfaces around some of the custom security and back end management processes I have worked with over the years.

I haven't done any OO programming in about 20 years. I was one of those guys who struggled back in the days before Booch made a name for himself. And also one of those guys who couldn't afford a machine big enough to handle the C++ compiler when it first came out. Plus I can recall all the bellyaching about awt when Java was new. But you know the golden rule, when the economy is slow, go back to school. So now is a perfect time for me.

Now I've gone on these tangents before. I learned Web stuff and CMS and php and a bit of Ruby all with absolutely no applications in my industry. But this time I'm going to really make sure that my stuff gets integrated. Even if it doesn't, I'm going to build the tools that I've always wanted to have, including a multidimensional fake data generator. With any luck, I'll make it read outlines. With any further luck, I'll make it read indices and generate a visualization of cubes.

But the great thing about this hedge is that it's just good to know Java and I think I should be applying myself to that and getting some traction in the general programming market. Not that I don't love what my company is doing, but we're headed towards some integration stuff in the industry and I think it will be very good for me to speak a few more languages. I'm going to do Python as well for some Google integration but that's on the back burner. I think Python will be much simpler and if I get bogged down in it I won't handle the more difficult task that Java presents.

So as I stumble my way forward, I'll put entries here in my Java journal at Cubegeek. Stay tuned.

Interesting Databases

I've been looking around for some nice data to keep redundantly on the home Terabyte which now that it is exceeding that needs a new name. It occurred to me that some stuff could be public in a non-queryable form. Give me the whole thing and let me figure out my own interface. So I'm thinking of doing some data mongering - or at least sharing some of that with all of you.

The first thing I found was looking at a check that Capital One sent me the other day. I guess I overpaid one of my credit cards and they're sending me a refund. I never use that one. So I wondered what bank Capital One uses. Since I once worked in a bank I know there are the ABA numbers but that's not where I looked. I found the IBAN numbers instead. It turns out that there are just a few. Here they are, it's a very tiny but very significant database that is kept by SWIFT. 53 records, if I remember correctly.Then there's the BIC pile of data as well. Small sets of data but very important.

Tonight my youngest daughter and I checked out the winter triangle in the southwestern sky. She then mentioned Arcturus and Antares, the biggest stars she knows. I didn't know where to look and thought about the fact that there are lots of free star map programs out there. Then I found SIMBAD which has about three million records of all sorts of astronomical objects.

Cool stuff. Not large. Wrapped up in fancy rather impermeable wrappers. That dooms them you know.

There's a great lecture about tagging that was delivered to the Long Now by Clay Shirky. You need to listen to the whole thing to understand what's so cool about redundancy.

Transparency Project

I'm interested in building a publically accessible system which details the budgets and spending of municipalities. I know a great deal about the technology. I've just been contacted by folks who do some of that for a living. It ought to be a blast. I think there would be a great deal of public interest in this. After all, it's trillions now...

I would appreciate any input you all might have for where this might take place now. I will investigate the difficult part which is to find out how to get the kind of software I know can make this possible, licensed and hosted. In the meantime I will putting together models and collecting data in MySQL.