If You Fail to Plan You're Planning to Fail

by Michael Wallace, VP Application Engineering

Is your business prepared to survive if a disaster strikes or will you be out of business?  This is the first in a series of articles discussing why any business not planning to fail must have a business continuity plan in place and some tips on getting your plan started.

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SQL Server Analysis Services: 'Analysis vs. Data Mining'

by Charles Tournear, Senior Consultant, MCSE, MCSD, CRCP, MCDBA, MCT

Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services provide tools to analyze data and to perform data-mining of data.  This article will begin to answer the question: “What is the difference between simple analysis and data-mining?”

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Enterprise Services and User Accounts

by Joe Roberts, Principal Consultant, BECP, SLE, MCP

When Business Objects Enterprise XI installs services the default configuration for “Log On As” is “System Account”. This default configuration creates a great deal of confusion and will even render some features of the platform unable to execute successfully.  In this article we will examine the “Log On As” feature, explain your options and hopefully, take the mystery out of this important task.

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Crystal Reports XIR2 - Working with Sections

by Tom Hinkle, Consultant, CRCP

Crystal Reports organizes the report into sections when it is created.  Using these sections effectively can produce very professional looking and performance optimized reports.

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SharePoint and Network Places

by Michael Mullin, Consultant, MCAD, CRCP, MCTS

This month’s article discusses how to use your computers ‘My Network Places’ to access files you have stored in SharePoint.

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Getting to Know Xcelsius

by Sean Beal, Sr. Consultant, CRCP

Early on I used Excel to manage large CSV extracts with a combination of VBA macros and formulas (as well as a lot of manual work) in order to create reports.  This was difficult and time consuming; it was also difficult to present and distribute the data that I had so painstakingly massaged.  When I discovered the advantages of using relational databases and the SQL language to manipulate data, and the ease of distribution and presentation with Crystal Reports,  I stopped using Excel…other tools were just way better at the job I needed to do.

However, I think I may need to dust off some of those skills and revisit my old friend Excel.  Why the change of heart?  Crystal Xcelsius.

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