Friday, April 18, 2008

The Intelligent Enterprise Blog: Competing on Decisions, by Neil Raden

The Intelligent Enterprise Blog: Competing on Decisions, by Neil Raden

BI and Technology: Part II

Thanks to all of you who responded to my last post with thoughtful comments. Rather than respond to each in a Lincoln-Douglas style debate, as Kurt Schlegel suggested, let me shift the discussion a little. Instead of arguing that technology alone can't move BI along, I'd rather explore the issue of what can.

To be effective, BI has to focus on simplicity of operation to achieve pervasiveness in the organization and beyond it. The model is the Consumer Web, which provides only the necessary presentation to perform the tasks at hand, and relies on open standards and loosely coupled services to perform the functions, which can be reconfigured dynamically. In the same way the users of the Consumer Web are willing to pay little or nothing directly (except for purchases), the cost of BI has to drop drastically from expensive, front-loaded perpetual licenses to pay-as-you-go on demand schemes.


>>Continue reading "BI and Technology: Part II"


Technology Is Not the Driver of BI Adoption

I'm having some problems with a March 20, 2008 article titled "Gartner: Emerging Technologies Will Help Drive Mainstream BI Adoption." This has been the Holy Grail of BI vendors for over a decade — to increase the number of "seats" using their products, widely reported to be about 20 percent of an organization but clearly much less than that. What troubles me the most about this article, or rather, about Gartner's analysis, is the supposition that new technology is going to crack this old chestnut. It won't. There are only two pieces of enterprise analytical software (broadly speaking) that ever gained currency in organizations in the past two decades — Excel and Google. Wouldn't it be a good idea to understand why?

>>Continue reading "Technology Is Not the Driver of BI Adoption"


Posted Friday, March 28, 2008
10:16 AM
>>Comments


Get Real About Operational BI

There is a lot of conflicting information about the term “Operational BI.” We need some research to sort out the jargon and propose a clear definition for the term (I’m willing). All of the following are being positioned as Operational BI (not a complete list):

• Data warehousing of operational data for reporting, with or without integration
• Replication of operational data for reporting
• Direct reporting from operational systems
• Federated reporting from operational systems
• Process Intelligence
• Inline integration
• Sensing applications
• Decision services
• Real-time BI

>>Continue reading "Get Real About Operational BI"


Posted Monday, July 16, 2007
12:27 AM
>>Comments

Who Defines BI? Part II

These are extended responses to comments made in the original blog "Who Defines BI?"

Cliff Longman, CTO at Kalido, commented: "I think of BI as the car and data warehousing as the engine…Data warehouses should represent the historical view (and the "what if?" views as well if it is a business requirement) of data that a business relies on to judge its performance."

Cliff, we're pretty much in agreement. I think what we have is a problem of semantics (what a coincidence). We need to separate the data warehouse from data warehousing, which I think you did. The data warehouse is a repository of re-used information with historical context. Its use, going forward, will be diminished to some uncertain degree by advances in technology. It will not go away, at least not anytime soon. I have no quarrel with the data warehouse as a data source for reporting and analysis, but not as THE source.

>>Continue reading "Who Defines BI? Part II"


Posted Monday, April 16, 2007
8:57 AM
>>Comments

Who Defines BI?

I was more than a little surprised when I read the article "Think Critically When Applying Best Practices," by Bob Becker and Ralph Kimball. Unless I misread it, they have come around and defined BI as the total process, including data warehousing. This is something that the other prominent data warehousing guru's did a few years ago when, fearing they would miss the boat of the suddenly hot BI market, declared their IT-oriented data warehouse environment as BI. The fallacy in this is that the people who use BI were always conspicuously absent from the diagrams and descriptions of the data warehouse. Their architecture blueprints depicted "users" (and keep in mind that there are only two industries that call their customers users) as little stick figures crushed under the weight of their elegant, multi-colored architectures, or through demeaning models with names such as "Farmers."

>>Continue reading "Who Defines BI?"


Posted Tuesday, April 3, 2007
9:01 AM
>>Comments

Thursday, April 17, 2008

ITtoolbox - Professional IT Community

ITtoolbox - Professional IT Community

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eLife Coupler - 856 x12 conversion | x12 Translation | EDI X12 mapping | ebXML and AS2 Messaging

eLife Coupler - 856 x12 conversion x12 Translation EDI X12 mapping ebXML and AS2 Messaging
Coupler Enterprise ?
A comprehensive suite of eBusiness Tools for Business Process Management, Workflow Automation, Data Integration, and Secure B2B communication. It is simply the easiest way to build and deploy eBusiness projects in a record time and without a single line of code.
Learn more >>
Coupler Schemas
EDI 204 Motor Carrier Load Tender Transaction
EDI 990 Response to a Load Tender
EDI 214 Transportation Carrier Shipment status
EDI 210 Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice
EDI 856 Advance Ship Notice/Manifest
Coupler WebClient ?/font>
A remote application that allows a partner to connect to a server partner and perform web services including C2B or B2B, and remote access to tracking information.
Learn more >>
Coupler ebXML Pack
A package that includes the basic components of Coupler to create a business workflow, an ebXML Adapter, and a Coupler Tracker to track your inbound/outbound documents. Price : $995.
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Coupler AS2 Pack
A package that includes the basic components of Coupler to create a business workflow, an AS2 Adapter, and a Coupler Tracker to track your inbound/outbound documents. Price : $995: Learn more >>

Coupler Translator Packs
A package that includes the basic components of Coupler to create a business workflow, & a Coupler Mapper to map one of the following specific formats

Monday, April 7, 2008

Managing identity columns with replication in SQL Server

MICROSOFT SQL SERVER
Managing identity columns with replication in SQL ServerBaya Pavliashvili08.03.2007Rating: -4.50- (out of 5)
Expert advice on database administration
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powered by:
There are some issues associated with managing identity columns with replication in your SQL Server database. As with previous releases of software, SQL Server 2005 requires that database administrators use special care when replicating tables with identity columns.
First, let me offer a little background about identity columns to help you understand why they're different from any other column with a numeric data type. Identity columns have monotonously increasing numeric values that SQL Server assigns to each row automatically when the row is created. Normally, identity columns have INT or BIGINT data types, although you could use other numeric data types as well. By default, SQL Server seeds such columns at 1 and increments by 1, but you can change to the seed and increment of your liking.
Identity columns are good candidates for a table's primary key because they're unique for each row and cannot be updated without deleting and re-creating the row.
SQL Server replication scenarios
To make this tip easier to follow, let's imagine we're trying to replicate a table with the following schema:
Click here to view schema.
Next, let's consider various replication scenarios where this table could be used:
Publisher and subscriber have the same data, and the subscribing database is used for read-only purposes. This is the simplest scenario; you don't need AccountKey column to have an identity property on the subscriber because you'll never add any rows to it. Instead, as records are added to the publisher database, they'll also be added to the subscriber through replication.
Multiple publishers replicate data to a single subscriber. With this scenario, we still presume that data is replicated in one direction, from publishers to subscriber(s), and no direct data changes occur on the subscriber. Now things are a bit more complicated, though, because we don't want duplicate values for primary key column. No worries – we can seed the AccountKey column at different values on each publisher. For example, if we expect a lot of records to be inserted on each of the three publishers, we can seed them as follows:
Publisher 1: [AccountKey] [int] IDENTITY(1,1)Publisher 2: [AccountKey] [int] IDENTITY(100000000,1)Publisher 3: [AccountKey] [int] IDENTITY(200000000,1)
This configuration would allow users to add up to 100 million records to the DimAccount table in each database. Furthermore, it also gives us an easy way of identifying records created on each server. What if we need to add more records on any server? What if our application grows by leaps and bounds and we need to add dozens of new servers with dimAccount tables? No need to panic. First, we can change the identity seed using DBCC CHECKIDENT statement at any time. So if we reach the identity seed of 199,999,999 on publisher 1 and we're about to step into the range of the second publisher, we can change the identity seed on the first server as follows:
DBCC CHECKIDENT (dimAccount, RESEED, 400000000)
Keep in mind that INT data type accepts negative values as well, and this data type can support up to 4 billion records (-2 billion to 2 billion). If you need to store more than 2 billion records, you'll need to switch to the BIGINT data type, which supports a huge range of values, between –9,223,372,036,854,775,808 and 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. I told you there was no need to worry!
Records can be added to the subscriber database, but they don't need to be replicated to publisher(s). This case is somewhat tricky. At first you might think we can add AccountKey with identity property and set its seed to a huge value, perhaps 1,000,000,000; but that alone won't work, for two reasons. First, with such architecture, an attempt to add a replicated record to the subscriber will fail. This is because you cannot explicitly specify the value of an identity column unless you issue SET IDENTITY_INSERT ON statement.
Second, if you enable the IDENTITY INSERT and add a record with identity value of 200,000,001, you'll effectively reset the identity seed on the subscriber. The next record you add directly (not through replication) to the subscriber will have the identity value of 200,000,002, which overlaps with the range of values we assigned to a publisher. Fortunately, we can use IDENTITY, NOT FOR REPLICATION option when defining the column on the subscriber. This option advises SQL Server not to override the current identity seed when records are added to the subscriber database through replication.
Records can be added on the subscriber and must also be delivered to publishers. Allow me to digress for a second and offer a personal opinion about this scenario. Although updateable subscriptions have been supported for years, I highly recommend using this option sparingly, i.e., only when absolutely necessary. The typical developer mentality is to use this (or any other) option because it's available. This is why it's crucial to separate developer and DBA duties.
As a DBA, you need to minimize the overhead on your server, because when systems behave poorly, all fingers point at you. Always require a valid business requirement for updateable subscriptions. "Do it because we want you to" is not a valid reason. Replicating transactions bi-directionally involves a fair amount of overhead. Realize that a transaction cannot be committed on the publisher until it is also committed on the subscriber. This functionality is implemented through replication triggers and what is referred to as the two-phase commit.
In this case, we must use IDENTITY, NOT FOR REPLICATION option both on publisher(s) and on subscribers. Once again, please do not read this tip as a recommendation to use updateable subscriptions when they're not necessary. I provide additional guidance for this scenario in the following section.
A special case of scenario 4 is the "peer-to-peer" publication, available only with SQL Server 2005. I'll save the discussion of peer-to-peer publications for another tip.
Options to manage identity seeds for replicated tables
If you must use updateable subscriptions, you need to define identity ranges on publisher and subscriber servers to avoid the creation of duplicate primary keys.
SQL Server 2005 supports several options for managing identity seed ranges. Note that you can set these options only when you first add the table
More on SQL Server replication:
Guide: Replication techniques in SQL Server
Podcast: SQL Server replication
article to the publication. If you need to change the identity management options, you must remove the article from the publication and add it back. Depending on the table size and your application's availability requirements, dropping and re-adding articles on demand might not be an option. Be sure to carefully choose the proper option.
Here is the summary of identity management options:
Manual – default and self-explanatory option. SQL Server doesn't manage identity seeds for you. Database administrator must explicitly configure ranges on publisher and subscriber. You can implement identity ranges by simply adding CHECK constraints to the replicated table on the publisher and subscriber(s). The same process works if you're subscribing to transactions replicated by multiple publishers. For example, I could add the following check constraints to dimAccount:
-- on the publisher:ALTER TABLE DimAccountADD CONSTRAINT ck_AcctKeyCHECK NOT FOR REPLICATION (AccountKey < 1000)
-- on the subscriber:ALTER TABLE DimAccountADD CONSTRAINT ck_AcctKeyCHECK NOT FOR REPLICATION (AccountKey >= 1000)
Now, if identity value reaches 1,000 on the publisher, SQL Server will return the following error:
The INSERT statement conflicted with the CHECK constraint "ck_AcctKey".The conflict occurred in database "AdventureWorksDW", table "dbo.DimAccount",column 'AccountKey'.
To resolve the problem, I should find the highest identity value on the subscriber, then re-seed the identity of the replicated table on the publisher so that its primary key values do not overlap with those found on the subscriber.
-- execute on the subscriber:SELECT MAX(AccountKey) FROM dimAccount
--let's suppose the previous statement returned 1510-- next reseed the publisher and allow thesubscriber plenty of room to grow:-- execute this on the publisher so that thenext identity value is 5000:DBCC CHECKIDENT('DimAccount', RESEED, 5000)
Keep in mind that replication will copy check constraints from publisher to subscriber(s) by default. If you're managing identity seeds manually, be sure to change this default behavior (using article properties' dialog) so that these check constraints aren't replicated.
Automatic – SQL Server automatically assigns identity ranges on publisher and subscriber based on additional parameters you specify. With automatic identity management, you need to provide the following parameters:
Publisher range size – range of identity values on the publisher
Subscriber range size – range of identity values on the subscriber
Once you specify these values, SQL Server automatically adds a check constraint to the replicated table on the publisher, as well as subscriber servers. The check constraint on the publisher allows identity values between the current highest value plus identity seed (for example 500 + 1= 501) and current max value plus publisher size range (for example, 500 + 10,000 = 10,500). The subscriber is seeded at one plus the maximum value allowed on the publisher; continuing from previous examples, the seed on the subscriber would be 10,501. The value of "subscriber range size" parameter is used to determine the upper limit. If the identity range "fills up" and you attempt to add a new record, you will get the following error message:
The insert failed. It conflicted with an identity range check constraint in database 'XYZ', replicated table 'dbo.DimAccount', column 'AccountKey'. If the identity column is automatically managed by replication, update the range as follows: for the Publisher, execute sp_adjustpublisheridentityrange; for the Subscriber, run the Distribution Agent or the Merge Agent.
As the error message indicates, you can fix the problem by executing a system procedure as follows:
sp_adjustpublisheridentityrange 'DimAccount'
This will adjust the check constraint and give the table on the publisher server a new range of identity values to work with.
None – this option is supported only for backward compatibility with previous versions. If you use a wizard to migrate your replicated databases from prior versions to SQL Server 2005, by default this option will be chosen for tables with identity columns. The net effect of this option is that you must manage identity values manually.
Summary
In this tip, I discussed various scenarios for replicating tables that have identity columns and options for identity management. You don't have to ditch identity columns to use replication, just handle them with care.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Xampp on WinXP - Deki Wiki

Xampp on WinXP - Open Garden

have just installed and got working Deki-Hayes on WinXp for a second time. I wrote down what I did this time so I wrote a tutorial that I think works well.

I recommend downloading the formatted Word doc from
http://wiki.opengarden.org/User:Abarras

Installing Deki-Hayes 1.8.1c on WindowsXP Pro using Xampp.
By: Andrew Barras
abadger AT bellsouth.net

Much of this guide is similar to PeteE’s guide located at http://wiki.opengarden.org/User:Pete...llation_(Hayes)

The only main differences are this one uses Xampp which greatly simplifies things. Also I have not had any luck installing Aspell yet so this guide leaves it out.

Part 1: Installations
Downloads required:

1. Xampp 1.6.3a win32 Basic Package
2. Deki_Wiki_1.8.1c_Hayes_source
3. ImageMagick-6.3.5-5-Q16-windows-dll
4. Dot Net 2.0 Framework

Disable IIS to free the required ports: (if not installed then skip this)

1. Go to All Programs->Administrative Tools->Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
2. If necessary, expand the Web server that you want, and then expand Web Sites.
3. Right-click the Web site that you want to change. (Default)
4. Click Properties.
5. Click the Web Site tab.
6. Change the TCP Port Number in the TCP Port edit box and change it to something other than 80. (20001 should be good)
7. Click OK to save the changes.

8. Go to All Programs->Administrative Tools->Services
9. Find IIS Admin.
10. Right click to bring up Properties.
11. Change Startup type to Disabled.
12. Press the Stop button if it is not grayed out.
13. Close those windows.

Installing the Dot Net 2.0 Framework

1. Double-click the installable file "dotnetfx.exe"

2. Follow the prompts.


Installing Deki-Hayes

1. Unzip the downloaded file. (Deki_Wiki_1.8.1c_Hayes_source)

2. Copy it to where you want your Wiki directory to be. Remember this location. (Ex. C:\deki-hayes)

3. Copy file mono.posix.dll
a. from C:\YOUR_INSTALL_LOCATION\src\redist
b. to c:\YOUR_INSTALL_LOCATION\web\bin


Installing Xampp

1. Run the installer
a. Check Install Apache as Service
b. Check Install MySQL as service

2. Press Install. If WinXP comes up with a security alert, roll your eyes, then press Unblock.

3. The installer will test all the ports for you.

a. If it says success then run the Xampp control panel when it asks you to.
b. If it says you have a problem, run xampp-portcheck.exe in the Xampp directory. See what is blocking the ports and turn off that stuff. (usually it is IIS)

4. When the Xampp control panel comes up it should say Apache Running and MySql Running. If either of these are not shown as running then you probably have a port conflict.

5. Keep the control panel open as we will want to restart Apache a few times.

6. Test if everything is working at this point by loading http://localhost/index.php in a browser. You should see a Xampp splash screen. Xampp, Php, MySQL, and Apache are installed and configured.

Install ImageMagick.

1. Use all the defaults to install it.

Copy Curl dlls

1. In order for Curl to work, you need to
a. Copy C:\xampp\php\libeay32.dll and C:\xampp\php\ssleay32.dll
b. to C:\windows\system32\

Part 2: Configuration

Note: There are several files of the same name in the Xampp directory (such as multiple php.ini files) so read carefully and open the right one.

Configure PHP and Curl

1. Open C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini

2. Set short_open_tag = On

3. Remove the semicolon from in front of extension=php_curl.dll

4. Save and exit.


Configure Apache.

1. Open C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf

2. Enable the following Modules by removing the # at the front of the line.
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so


The Virtual Host stuff needs to be added in a specific location or it will mess up.

1. Find this text: mod_mime_magic module

2. Immediately above that there is a line called . Right after that line add the following:


DocumentRoot "c:/deki-hayes/web"
ServerName deki-hayes

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule ^/$ /index.php?title= [L,NE]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/(@api|editor|skins|config)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/(redirect|texvc|index|Version).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/robots.txt
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/dummy.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/phpinfo.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ [OR] %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Special:Search
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA,NE]

ProxyPass /@api http://localhost:8081 retry=1
ProxyPassReverse /@api http://localhost:8081
SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1

AllowEncodedSlashes On



3. Change the DocumentRoot above to show the path to where you are putting Deki-hayes.

4. Change the ServerName above to show the name of your Wiki server.

5. Find .

6. Add Allow from all right after Deny from all.

Restart Apache

1. Using the Xampp control panel, restart Apache. (wait a few seconds between stopping and starting it)

2. If you typed everything right, you should get Apache to say Running again. If it doesn't come back up, you missed a step or did something wrong. Try running the apache_start.bat file in the Xampp directory. It will give you more information about where it is failing.

Part 3: Running Deki-Hayes install

1. In a web browser type http://localhost/

2. The Deki install page now comes up. It should give errors about ImageMagick Identify and about Aspell but otherwise says you are OK to install.

3. Fill out the info about your wiki.

a. For Superuser password, there is none right now so leave it blank.

b. Make sure ImageMagick is set up correctly. (Identify is blank. Fill it in as below)

i. ImageMagick convert: C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.3.5-Q16\convert.exe

ii. ImageMagick identify: C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-6.3.5-Q16\identify.exe

4. Press Install Deki Wiki

5. Do the last commands at the end of the resulting install page. (you don't have to do them from the command line on Windows. )

Note: the last step is to run the command mindtouch.host.bat, which opens a cmd window. DO NOT CLOSE THIS WINDOW. Leave it open. Minimize it if you want. This batch file starts the actual Deki server (which is written in .NET). You may be accustomed to closing command windows after running batch files - your instinct to do so will cause endless frustration, so don't do it. There are methods to running this batch file as a Windows service, one of which is covered here.

6. You should now be able to type http://localhost/index.php and get your Wiki up!

The way the captcha code is written it won't work on WinXp so we have to diable it. If not, we won't be able to create users!

I removed the captcha checking from my installation by changing the following:

In file includes\SpecialUserlogin.php

1. change line 336 from if (captcha::check()) to if (true) (line 352 in v1.8.2)

2. comment out ( put // at the front of the line) lines 522, 523, 524 and 587-594

(v1.8.2: lines 532-534, 596-604)

3. Save the file.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

ThoughtFarmer - Beyond wikis: Knowledge sharing for the new enterprise

ThoughtFarmer - Beyond wikis: Knowledge sharing for the new enterprise

ThoughtFarmer combines structure and social networking with easy wiki authoring, helping companies share knowledge and strengthen community.



ThoughtFarmer's structured wiki approach is a 'best of both worlds' solution: the flexibility of a wiki, without the chaos. Even the least technical people in the organisation find it easy to use.

Miko Coffey, Head of Digital Media, NESTA

Working with ThoughtFarmer, we quickly built a clinical reference portal that physicians found easy to use and is easy to maintain.

Dr. Morgan Price, Medical Informatics Consultant
to Vancouver Coastal Health Primary Care IT Strategy

XWiki - Main - WebHome

XWiki - Main - WebHome

come to XWiki

The XWiki project offers both a generic platform for developing collaborative applications using the wiki paradigm and products developed on top of it. All XWiki software is developed in Java and under the LGPL open source license.

MediaWiki - MediaWiki

MediaWiki - MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki.

Use the links below to explore the basic site contents. You'll find some content translated into other languages, but the primary reference language for the whole site is English.

For general questions dealing with the software see the recommended possibilities of communication and maybe our support desk. If you have a suggestion dealing with this wiki, please visit the Forum.

WikiMatrix / Integrated Wiki/Forum - Compare them all

WikiMatrix / Integrated Wiki/Forum - Compare them all:

SMF (Simple Machines Forum) Authorization Modules for Dokuwiki:
http://www.web-threads.com/downloads/dokuwiki-smf.php

SMF/DokuWiki Integration: creates a topic for each article when the user clicks on the discuss button
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:tips:in … _smf?s=smf

PunBB Authentication for DokuWiki:
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:auth:punbb

How to integrate DokuWiki with vBulletin 3.5.X authentication
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:tips:in … etin_3.5.x

IPBWiki connects MediaWiki with Invision Power Board software: http://www.ipbwiki.com/IpbWiki_Features

List of sites running IPBWiki:
http://www.ipbwiki.com/Sites_Running_IpbWiki

What it takes to do an install:
http://www.ipbwiki.com/IpbWiki:IpbWiki_Installation

Example of the kind of threaded discussion you can have for each article:
http://www.ipbwiki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1140

IpbWiki Free Version:
http://www.ipbwiki.com/forums/index.php … showcat=13

PHPBB integration for Mediawiki:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi … p;t=578123

VBulletin extension for MediaWiki:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension … ntegration

NuWiki (VBulletin with a wiki) and vbWiki (a VBuuletin/MediaWiki extension) Comparison
http://www.nuhit.com/nuwiki/comparison.html

SMF_Authentication: Authenticates users from Simple Machines Forum and automatic logs them in and out on MediaWiki. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension … entication

Last edited by Ross (2007-10-31 13:37:21)

Cases 2.0 / Cases 2.0

Cases 2.0 / Cases 2.0

Cases 2.0

Welcome to Cases2.com!

If you would like to enter a new case study, please use the Case template, then link to it from this page. As the case library grows, we'll need to present and categorize them differently, but let's do that when it's time, not before.


The history of Cases2.com

The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler

The Content Wrangler Community

The social network for content professionals

Confluence - Enterprise Wiki Software

Confluence - Enterprise Wiki Software

Confluence – the enterprise wiki

Confluence is an enterprise wiki that makes it easy for your team to collaborate and share knowledge. Confluence - The Enterprise Wiki

Adding, sharing and finding content has never been easier.

These benefits come with all the additional features needed to make it a part of your business:

  • Enterprise security
  • Simple installation and management
  • Attractive, user-friendly WYSIWYG interface
  • Powerful tools for structuring and searching your wiki
  • Professional features such as PDF export and automated refactoring
  • An open API for extension and integration
  • Atlassian's Legendary Service
  • and much more...

Deki Wiki - MindTouch

Deki Wiki - MindTouch

Deki Wiki Overview

unlimited users
unlimited pages
no restrictions
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MindTouch Deki Wiki is a free open source wiki and application platform for communities and enterprises. Deki Wiki is an easy to use and sophisticated wiki for authoring, aggregating, organizing, and sharing content. Deki Wiki is also a platform for creating collaborative applications, or adding wiki capabilities to existing applications.

Why Deki Wiki?

Deki Wiki is an award winning and easy to use way to create, organize, aggregate, mashup and share information of almost any type. You will not find an easier to use and more affordable way to build a community, collaborate in a team, or simply share things like office documents, emails, videos, images, and more. In fact, Deki Wiki is free why not ';return false;" class="external" rel="external nofollow" target="blank" href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173074&package_id=198184&release_id=534709" title="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173074&package_id=198184&release_id=534709">download it right now?It installs in minutes. Don't take MindTouch's word, let some recent testimonials inform your opinion of MindTouch Deki Wiki.

Warning: skip this paragraph if you're not geeky. Deki Wiki isn't just a really easy to use application. It's also a platform. Similar to CMS web frameworks like Drupal, Mambo, Joomla and DotNetNuke, Deki Wiki delivers a remarkably extensible platform, but it's a wiki in nature; therefore making it community-centric and significantly easier for end-users to participate. Also, it has a complete application programming interface (API) for programmers. We've actually built the entire application on our API. This means everything Deki Wiki can do can be accessed via the API. Moreover, with our innovative web-services extension model you can extend Deki Wiki in any programming language. If you're a programmer, you should investigate the MindTouch supported developer community at OpenGarden.org. Also, the Deki Wiki developer page provides a wealth of information.

Great Interface and WYSIWYG Editing

Deki Wiki user interface Just take a look at Deki Wiki (you actually are right now, this site is powered by Deki Wiki). What you'll find is that Deki Wiki is intuitive and easy to use. In fact, it's actually fun to use!! Edit a page. You'll immediately notice that Deki Wiki has a WYSIWYG, or rich text, editor similar to a light-weight word processor. There is no arcane or non-standard markup language. You can copy/paste from office WYSIWYG Editordocuments or other web pages. Linking is as easy as selecting the text and navigating to the page or attachment you wish to link. You need not memorize the path or learn a new language. You'll find Deki Wiki to be very familiar.

Pages and Files

Attached files and images Creating pages and attaching files is just a click away. Users of Deki Wiki can attach documents and images to individual pages. Images are presented in an attractive image gallery. At a glance you one can see who edited pages or attached files, when it was done, and read a description of the action that is automatically generated or manually provided..

Nothing is ever lost in Deki Wiki. Every edit is tracked and versioned. Users can compare versions of pages. Similarly, file attachments are versioned. When a user links to a file the link will always point to the most recent version of the attached file. Likewise, if a user renames a page all links to this page will be properly maintained.

Permissions

Restrict page access Deki Wiki has one of the most advanced permission systems available. Deki Wiki administrators can make wikis public or private, anonymous or not. There is user groups support. Users can permission entire hierarchies to create private or non-editable workspaces or permission single pages. Deki Wiki has built in support for LDAP, Active Directory, Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla.

Finding and Organizing Content

Page hierarchies can be used to define a taxonomy

Deki Wiki provides many ways to organize content. Hierarchies allow users to define a taxonomy of pages. This is a very natural way to organize things. Everyone understands a family tree.Tagging a page

Deki Wiki also allows tagging. Tag folksonomies are wonderfully useful when using systems with multiple users. With Deki Wiki a user can use key word tags, date and time tags, and define tag categories.

As users add content to Deki Wiki the time the content is added is tracked. There are many ways to browse content chronologically. We call these chronologies. Users can follow recent changes chronologically throughout an entire wiki site, on a per page basis, or based on individual users' contributions. This makes it very easy to discover content and track what's going on in the wiki. Date and time tags also provide another way of organizing and finding information chronologically.A page's tags

A user's watchlist of pagesIf users are especially interested in some pages they can create a watchlist of pages. With a watchlist it's easy to track topics of interest or pet projects.

Another of the many ways Deki Wiki is unique is that it comes with an enterprise strength search engine named Lucene. Lucene is developed by the Apache Foundation. Lucene is a powerful search engine that is employed by many high performance enterprise-class search tools. Deki Wiki uses Lucene to index all pages and most common file types. Finding what you're looking for in pages, files or tags is just a search away with Deki Wiki.

Subscribe! Deki Wiki generates RSS feeds in a number of ways. Users may subscribe to the entire wiki site, individual users' contributions, their watchlist, or the watchlists' of other users.

Find out more about Deki Wiki's features or learn more about it's benefits.


Nathan @ e-gineer: Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise

Nathan @ e-gineer: Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise

Our Intranet, the Wiki: Case Study of a Wiki changing an Enterprise

Introduction

Janssen-Cilag is one of the fastest growing, research based pharmaceutical companies in Australia. It has more than 300 employees, split across Australia and New Zealand with around half based in the field. It is one of 250 Johnson & Johnson operating companies, which total about 121,000 employees across 57 countries.

In 2006, Janssen-Cilag completely replaced our simple, static HTML intranet with a Wiki solution. Over the 16 months since launch, it has dramatically transformed our internal communication and continues to increase in both visits and content contributions each month.

History of Janssen-Cilag's Intranet

Janssen-Cilag's previous intranet, InfoDownUnder, was a static HTML site, originally developed in 2001. Content was maintained using FrontPage, with only a handful of active editors throughout the company. IT was involved only to upload latest versions of content files from the development site onto the production server.

While some areas were lovingly maintained to a high standard, large sections of content were out of date. There was no search capability. Trust in the information was very low. News was distributed via email, not the web. The site featured excessive use of the blink tag, and New! icons highlighting content that was up to 3 years old.

Latent demand for change was strong.

Intranet requirements gathering

The culture at Janssen-Cilag is highly consultative and relationship based. As such, gathering information and buy-in is often achieved through a series of conversations and discussions, building a coalition of support.

Requirements for a new Intranet site were collected through 27 interviews with a variety of people from all levels of the business. Three themes emerged:

  1. We need a trusted source of information
  2. Whatever we do has to be simple
  3. Just do something!

Each conversation varied widely in focus, but the format usually went as follows:

  1. The floodgates open with a dump of information the user considers vital for the Intranet, which lasts about 15 minutes. (What can I get?)
  2. They highlight search as a key requirement.
  3. I would steer the conversation to questions about how content should be maintained. (What can you give?)

Pitching a Wiki to the business

With many years of experience building one of the first large scale completely open collaboration platforms for the web and then building heavyweight enterprise CMS systems for large organisations, I've personally come full-circle to the idea that the best collaboration systems are incredibly simple and open. Wiki's are a powerful starting point for any organisation, but latent demand at Janssen-Cilag created the perfect environment.

As such, I used the requirements gathering session as a chance to pitch the idea of a Wiki as the solution to our Intranet problem. After bringing the conversation to understand our content maintenance requirements, I'd talk through the Wiki approach and how it may work for Janssen-Cilag. My sales pitch went as follows:

  1. We need a system where editing is immediate and very simple.
  2. Getting people to contribute at all is hard, so we need to concentrate on letting people do things rather than worrying about what they shouldn't do.
  3. The risk of letting anyone change anything is low, since we'll keep a complete history of changes so we can quickly undo mistakes and we can hold irresponsible individuals accountable for anything improper. (Reactive moderation rather than Proactive moderation).

In general, the response was incredibly positive. Predictably, the main argument against this system was fear of improper changes to content, particularly for information subject to regulatory control. I would counter this argument in two ways:

  1. There are two ways to control people's behaviour: social forces and technical forces. Currently, we successfully rely on social forces to control a wide range of things like who calls or emails the CEO with their latest crazy idea. Technical forces are powerful, but with each technical feature we increase training and raise the bar against collaboration. Surely, we can see if social forces will be enough for all but the most critical of content?
  2. Anyone can choose to monitor any content that they are concerned about (e.g. automatic email alert with changes). So, they can quickly jump in and correct any mistakes.
  3. For exceptional cases, we may choose to lock down critical content and define clear ownership and responsibility for its maintenance.

At the end, showing people around Wikipedia was an incredibly powerful way to seal the deal, particularly since they have often used it to find information in the past.

There were no major objections to trying a Wiki-style concept.

Implementing a Wiki for your Enterprise Intranet

We purchased, customised and launched a pilot Wiki Intranet within two weeks and with a budget of $11,000 AUD. This included all graphic design and single sign on integration.

After evaluating a wide range of alternatives including MediaWiki, Twiki and FlexWiki; we selected Confluence by Atlassian. Our main concerns were support for a hierarchy of pages, strong attachment capabilities, news features, LDAP integration, high quality search and a decent rich text editor.

Our customisation focused almost completely on usability. People shouldn't know or care that they are using a Wiki. All that matters is that they can easily browse, search and contribute content. (In fact, after 16 months, only a small set of Janssen-Cilag staff would think of our Intranet as a Wiki. To them, it just seems natural that Intranet software would have evolved to something this simple to use.)

Here were our implementation decisions:

  • Integration with LDAP and use of NTLM for automatic single sign on is essential. We even hacked someone's starting point and open sourced our improved version.
  • Rich text editing must be available and as Word-like as possible.
  • Users like hierarchy and structure, the Wiki should not feel disorganised or completely free-form. (Confluence supports this with an exact page hierarchy capability.)
  • Sacrifice power and flexibility for simplicity. For example, our page design is fixed into a title, alphabetical list of subpages, page content, alphabetical list of attachments. While it would be nice to be able to change this at times, or order the attachments, or change the look and feel; it's far more important that everyone can contribute and clearly understands how things work.
  • Remove as many unnecessary features as possible. For example, labels are a great idea, but we already have hierarchy and most users don't really know what labels are.

Launch & user training

We started the new site as a pilot, launching as the source of information for a relocation of our head office. (Nothing drives traffic like the seating plan for a new office!) Information around the relocation was fast moving and changing daily for the two weeks between announcement of the move and our actual relocation.

Building on that success, we obtained executive approval to replace the existing Intranet. Over the next two weeks we worked with key content owners (most particularly HR) to show them how to create pages and migrate appropriate information. We made the decision to not automatically migrate any content, mostly because it was so old and trust in the existing intranet information was so low.

Our launch was timed with an informal head office monthly meeting, where around 100 people stand and listen to an update from senior management. We switched the site to live during the meeting, and had 5 minutes to present:

  1. 1 min: Highlight the desire for a trusted source of information that was simple to use.
  2. 3 mins: Full training that showed how easy it was to view, search, edit & maintain.
  3. 1 min: Point out that responsibility for building that trusted source is now in your hands!

That launch presentation remains the only formal training we've ever provided on how to use the system.

Continuing training has been provided through short one-on-one demonstrations (we only show, we never do) and a detailed help section (I'm happy to show you now, but for future reference here is the help page).

Adoption, statistics & business impact

The adoption of JCintra has been remarkable. After only 3 months, 111 people had contributed more than 5,000 changes. After 12 months, we had 18,000 contributions from 184 people within the business.

Most significantly, our contributions per month has continued to grow since launch. People are engaging and collaborating more with time, they are not losing steam as you might expect.

To drive adoption, we've primarily focused on owning the flow of new information. Early on, we established a policy that all announcements must be on JCintra. When necessary, they may be sent via email in addition to posting as news on the Intranet. Today, announcements ranging from major restructures to new babies for employees flow through the news page without clogging up email inboxes.

Owning the flow of news has established JCintra as a trusted source for the latest information. This translates into an expectation that the stocks of information (e.g. policies) will be available and up to date. Own the flow and the stock will come.

Business information that was previously scattered in email (e.g. Business Planning presentations) is now collected into a permanent, secure online space. We have a growing reference and history of information to build on and make available to newcomers. Knowledge management, previously a big concern, has moved off the agenda for the time being.

Content ownership model

For many Intranet owners, the model for content ownership is a key point of focus. With JCintra, our philosophy (successfully so far) has been:

  1. If someone isn't willing to maintain a piece of content, it can't be that important to the business.
  2. We happily show people how to do things with the site, but we don't do it for them.
  3. Occasionally we highlight sections of the site on the home page, which is a great way to drive the defacto owners to clean it up a little.
  4. We encourage people to have high expectations for content on the Intranet. If something is missing, please report it to the appropriate area of the business, or better still, add it for them.
  5. The answer to verbal queries for many departments has become, "it's on JCintra". This reminds people to search first and ask later.
  6. In the end, the quality of content in an area is a reflection on the defacto department owner, not the Intranet itself.

As a result, we've seen some departments embrace the Intranet in a big way, while others don't update content as much as we'd like. As expected, service areas of the business have been strong adopters, which means the main areas of Intranet content have been well maintained.

We've not yet adopted a formal content review process, but believe this will become more important in the next year of the sites life.

Keeping momentum & next steps

The primary barrier to continued success of JCintra remains the same as our initial barrier: encouraging a culture of collaboration and transparency. Some areas of JCintra have been highly successful in this regard, while other sections have never gained clear ownership or momentum.

JCintra works best when it is established as the source of truth for information and becomes the place where the work is done on a day-to-day basis. While ever the Intranet is a place that has to hold a published copy, it will remain as "extra work" and struggle in the competition for people's time.

Conclusion

Implemented with usability and simplicity as the key focus, a Wiki is a fast, cheap and highly effective way to run an Intranet. Users do not perceive our Intranet as a Wiki, with all the anarchistic overtones that brings. Rather, they see the simplicity and flexibility as a natural evolution of Intranet technology.

In a culture full of all the typical trust, transparency, workload and security concerns common to big companies; the simplicity of this system and its content ownership model cut through. Problems of driving collaboration and content updates remain, but they are exposed as the cultural and people problems at their heart since the technical and workload "excuses" have been stripped away.

Note: Our Intranet has evolved significantly from the screenshots above, which were taken from the time of launch to avoid business confidentiality issues in this public forum. The site now includes a wealth of content and tight integration with our data warehouse, CRM and internal operational systems. Read more in Building Enterprise 2.0 on Culture 1.0.

WikiMatrix - Compare them all

WikiMatrix - Compare them all

tikiwiki.org -- Home of TikiWiki CMS/Groupware : HomePage

tikiwiki.org -- Home of TikiWiki CMS/Groupware : HomePage

Welcome to Tiki





TikiWiki (Tiki) is your Groupware/CMS (Content Management System) solution. Tiki has the features you need:
  • Wikis (like Mediawiki)
  • Forums (like phpBB)
  • Blogs (like WordPress)
  • Articles (like Digg)
  • Image Gallery (like Flickr)
  • Map Server (like Google Maps)
  • Link Directory (like DMOZ)
  • Multilingual (like Babel Fish)
  • Bug tracker (like Bugzilla)
  • Free (LGPL)
And much more...
  • all unified (like no one else)

Whatever you are looking for, chances are Tiki has it. Your search for the most feature-complete CMS is over.

Read the Top 10 Reasons to use Tiki, then get started with Tiki today.