Sample WebFOCUS BI Dashboards

Recently, a blog reader arrived while looking on the web for sample WebFOCUS BI dashboards. 

While some companies might create public sites using WebFOCUS, most use the BI Dashboard product for internal applications.  A good place to look for examples would be for PowerPoint presentations from earlier Information Builders Summit presentations.

You might also try a search aggregator such as Addict-O-Matic.  It's a neat site that uses all of the other search engines plus sites such as Flickr, Twitter, Truveo, YouTube, and others.  Give it a try now for WebFOCUS BI Dashboards. 

You can also try it for Summit presentations (hey -- look who shows up in the top results!).

Also, if you need to see samples in order to build your own WebFOCUS BI Dashboards, feel free to contact me for assistance.

IBI and IBM Partner for System z Data Warehousing

Today, Information Builders and IBM announced a new Business Intelligence partnership for data warehousing on the System z platform.  See the press release.

The new "Data Reporter for DB2" is a special WebFOCUS version specifically for System z DB2 data warehouses. 

Just a few years ago, IBI and IBM announced a similar partnership with the "DB2 Web Query" product -- a special WebFOCUS version made for System i data and intended to be a next-generation replacement for Query 400. 

This announcement raises some questions.  For example, if WebFOCUS supercedes Query 400 on the System i, is this same modernization message true for its mainframe peer Query Management Facility (QMF)?  A bigger question is, why didn't IBM just use its own BI product, Cognos, which also runs on the System z?

You can also read about this on Information Builders' website.

Partner Intelligence to Speak at IB Summit 2010

It is once again time for Information Builders' annual user group conference. From June 5th through 9th, Summit 2010 will be taking place at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Florida.

At this event, Information Builders will roll out WebFOCUS 8, the latest release of their Business Intelligence software product. If you would like to see examples of last year's presentations, see my earlier blog.

Also, Partner Intelligence will present with a government agency to demonstrate how we automated the conversion of their mainframe batch processes from using the legacy FOCUS product to WebFOCUS. It's amazing -- hundreds of reporting jobs were literally converted in just seconds.

If you are thinking of manually converting mainframe FOCUS to WebFOCUS, you need to see our presentation before you waste any of your company's time and money.  If you use legacy 4GLs (FOCUS, RAMIS, NOMAD), QMF/SQL, DYL280, Crystal Reports, or other old reporting tools, see how Partner Intelligence can leverage your existing application investments by translating into modern technology.

During the presentation, we will explain our DAPPER Methodology for automating the retirement of your legacy reporting tools. We will show you the tools we use to automatically scan, discover, and inventory your existing applications, dramatically reducing your upfront analysis time and cost. Then, we will show the automated conversion tools to translate legacy reporting applications into web-based BI with no manual coding effects needed.

Nowhere else will you will get the time and cost savings you will achieve from working with Partner Intelligence.  Manual BI conversions are a thing of the past, only proposed by services firms who want to provide you with a team of consultants for long, expensive engagements.

Contact me directly if you are attending Summit 2010 and would like to meet face-to-face to discuss how we can work together to dramatically reduce the time, costs, and risks of your enterprise BI consolidation efforts.

Convert Legacy FOCUS Batch Jobs to WebFOCUS

One of the major challenges in converting legacy FOCUS on the mainframe are the number of batch jobs written with JCL.  Now, the challenges of manually analyzing and changing these jobs have been overcome.

Partner Intelligence has enhanced its BI Consolidator software for mainframe JCL.  For analysis and a conversion roadmap, the application can automatically scan, analyze, and inventory the instructions contained in the job stream.  After that, the BI Consolidator can automatically create new versions of the JCL: a legacy "test" version along with a new WebFOCUS "test" version for parallel testing, plus  a new WebFOCUS version for moving into production.

The BI Consolidator currently offers two options for converting mainframe jobs with FOCUS steps.  First, we can easily convert MVS FOCUS to Unix System Services WebFOCUS.  You eliminate your legacy text-based FOCUS license and usage, move to the web version, yet still have mainframe data access.  Your current FOCUS batch jobs continue to work, just using new web technology under the covers.  If you want, you can enhance the batch job outputs to take advantage of new WebFOCUS features, or simply leave everything running as-is.

A second BI Consolidator option is to automatically convert the JCL to replace MVS FOCUS processes with those running on a zLinux partition using TCP remote calls.  This technique allows you to offload mainframe processing while keeping your legacy batch job streams.  This is especially important if you have integrated other mainframe technologies into the FOCUS batch stream (e.g., COBOL steps, IMS batch access, TSO batch access, IDCAMS, external sorts, and so forth).

The BI Consolidator also provides documentation features that generate new job listings with special highlighting as well as test plan spreadsheets.  These help guide and simplify the parallel testing work.

Partner Intelligence's BI Consolidator application eliminates all of the manual coding typically involved with converting mainframe JCL with FOCUS steps to run with WebFOCUS.  It does this with zero defects and at a rate of about 20 jobs per second.  Any alternative manual approach is a waste of your company's money as well as unnecessary risk.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact me.

2010 Growth for Partner Intelligence

In 2010, Partner Intelligence will double its consulting staff!

We are seeking experienced Business Intelligence professionals (in particular, with WebFOCUS skills) primarily in the Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana geography. We need to expand our permanent staff with quality individuals seeking long-term careers in BI software consulting services.

After just a few years, Partner Intelligence has consulting staff in major cities of Cincinnati, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Dallas (these are full-time employees, not temporary subcontractors). In 2009, Information Builders named Partner Intelligence their preferred national vendor for BI conversion services, due to our methodologies and award-winning automated software tools.

To sustain our growth, Partner Intelligence has a direct sales and marketing staff. Our national recruiting team searches for quality WebFOCUS professionals across the country. We have a strategic advisor, executive management team, and the typical administrative groups. Our executive management team have relationships with most of the area's major firms. We are now in our second office space and have decided in 2010 to purchase a new, larger location. Partner Intelligence's growth is supported financially by a debt-free parent organization that ranked second as the fastest-growing privately-held company in Cincinnati.

I am proud of Partner Intelligence’s success and am working hard to continue that into the future. Would you like to be part of this exciting opportunity?

If so, let's discuss how you could join Partner Intelligence. Contact me at DLautzenheiser at my PartnerPS e-mail address.

Converting NOMAD 4GL to WebFOCUS

If your organization still uses the NOMAD 4GL, Partner Intelligence has a cost-effective option for modernizing your applications and retiring NOMAD.  Partner Intelligence can leverage your legacy investments by automatically translating much of your logic into WebFOCUS. 

Back in the 1980s, the competing 4GL products were NOMAD, RAMIS, and FOCUS.  Today, only the FOCUS 4GL is still owned by its original developers.  Companies still relying upon NOMAD and RAMIS are few and far between (see my 2008 blog entry). 

Since releasing the next-generation web version of FOCUS around 1995, Information Builders and their customers have done extremely well with the new architecture.  Thousands of well-known organizations use WebFOCUS: NASA, American Express, JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor Company, Nationwide Insurance, FedEx, Target Stores, Sony, and JCPenney, just to name a few.

If you still have NOMAD, now is the time to consider moving to modern technologies.  Here is a list of how the Partner Intelligence application converts specific NOMAD features into a WebFOCUS equivalent:

• Report verb (LIST) and extract file verb (CREATE)

• Multiple verb requests in a single program file

• Original program comments carried forward into generated WebFOCUS code

• Calculations of virtual columns (DEFINE)

• Subroutines (DISPLAY, SUBSTR, CAT, CATB, IN, BETWEEN, CONTAINS, DECODE)

• Aggregation functions (CNT, SUM, UNIQUE, MAX, MIN, AVG, FIRST, LAST, NUMBER)

• Distinct Count

• Page headings and footings (TITLE and FOOTING)

• Report footings (SUMMARY)

• Report body (columns)

• Report sorting (BY column) and subtotal break (SUBTOTAL FOR)

• Sort control breaks (BYHEAD and BYFOOT)

• Matrix report sorting (ACROSS column) and row-total (ROWTOT)

• Descending sort option (DESC)

• Report options (NEWPAGE, FOLD, SKIP, OVER)

• Report grand totals (TOTAL ALL)

• Body and sort column invisible option (NOPRINT)

• Column titles (HEADING)

• Column reformatting (AS format)

• Selection criteria (WHERE, SELECT)

• Column spot markers in text (COLUMN)

• Symbolic variable setting (SET &variable) on sort columns

• Symbolic variables used in text (&variable)

• Symbolic substitution using the ‘?(&variable)’ syntax after pre-scan and prior to execution

• Prompting of symbolic variables and formatting (DECLARE AS) *exception is DATE format

• FOR WORKSHEET and LOTUS123 extract file options

• ON filename option

• Extract file (CREATE) subsets with MATCHING (EXTRACT, SUBSET, MERGE, REJECT)

• Support for NOT IN phrases

• Support for some system variable (&NOTAVAILABLE, &NOVALUE)

• Equivalency tests with &NOTAVAILABLE converted to MISSING tests

• Support for DUP option to force sort values not to be suppressed (WebFOCUS BYDISPLAY)

• Procedural scripting labels and unconditional GOTO statements

• DEFINE AS EXTRACT option

• HEADING option on DEFINEd columns (ignored)

• NAMED option on columns (WebFOCUS “AS” and ASNAMES setting)

• SYSTEM ALLOC and FREE commands (translated to TSO commands – may need to translate for USS)

• CALL routines translated to EXEC (see translation notes)

• TEST and LIMIT statements are translated to RECORDLIMIT

 
 
To convert legacy BI products, Partner Intelligence employs our "DAPPER" approach, proceeding through the following phases:
 
D - Discover
A - Analyze
P - Perform Pilot Conversion
P - Plan for Full Conversion
E - Execute the Plan in a phased approach
R - Retire the legacy BI product
 
 
One of our first steps in a BI conversion is to get an accurate inventory of the existing legacy environment.  Using our automated scanning and inventory application, Partner Intelligence can quickly provide you with details for scoping a conversion effort.  Contact us for more information.

Running WebFOCUS BI Applications on the iPhone

Have you ever considered accessing your WebFOCUS BI applications from your phone?  You can if you own the Apple iPhone.  For more information, see my general BI blog or contact me.