ronpih's weblog

This is strange.  I just create a "page" on my blog that contained a list of software development blogs.  Then I created a post to that link.  When I went to the post and clicked on the link to the "page," the content of the "page" had changed to the content of the post.  Here's the two URLs:

Page: http://blogs.msdn.com/ronpih/pages/software-development-blogs.aspx

Post: http://blogs.msdn.com/ronpih/archive/2009/05/08/software-development-blogs.aspx

Note that both URLs show the same content.  The original content I put on the "page" was a list of software development blogs that I will attempt to recreate later...

Continuing my every-once-in-a-while theme of collection blogs related to a particular topic, I have create a list of software development blogs.  Just a start for now...

When I'm reading a book, a glaring error makes me start to think the book wasn't well reviewed.  And it diminishes my opinion of the book despite otherwise great content.  It's an issue for me.

So, I'm reading "Smart Business Intelligence Solutions..." and I get to the end of Chapter 9.  It says: "In the next two chapters, we'll look at the world of Data Mining."  The next two chapters?

Chapter 10, Introduction to MDX
Chapter 11, Advanced MDX

...disappointing...

Further, trying to add a tag to this post, I get a 404 error from Community Server.  Sigh...

Maybe it's time to call it a day...

My list of Software Testing Blogs hasn't been updated in a while.  Some links are stale and I'm sure that there are some new blogs that should be added.  While I'm at it, I should look at my list of Analysis Services related blogs.

 Maybe this coming weekend...

I'm starting to see 2008 versions of Analysis Services and other BI-related books starting to come out.  On my reading list so far:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Unleashed
• Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008

These both look to be great books.

Saturday morning I went to see the Fripp Siblings speak.  I have long been a King Crimson fan but I have also followed Mr. Fripp's work and writings outside the context of KC.  This was a rare opportunity for me to hear Mr. Fripp speak rather than play live and in person and he said some things that really resonated with me.

He used stories from his past to illustrate profound concepts in an informal way.  I have to admit that from my exposure to his work I felt I would be somewhat intimidated by his presence live but didn't feel that way at all.  Sister (as Patricia Fripp calls herself) played a complimentary role to Mr. Fripp and helped the morning work well.  I was also impressed at the thoughtfulness and respect of the audience.  Money and time well spent.

It's Sunday evening and I just got back from the traditional welcome dinner for AYE 2008.  It was great to see some old AYE friends and meet a couple of new ones as well.  Some thoughts from the dinner and post-dinner conversations (which I want to just jot down here so I don't forget about them):

 I heard the word "agile" from way more people than at past AYE conferences I've attended.  There must be some sort of critical mass thing happening...

I heard some terms that I have to research in order to understand what some of the discussion was about: "the Nielsen problem", "Kano Analysis".

There was a post-dinner conversation about thinkers vs. doers.  This was in the context of the differences between agile vs. planned methodologies.

In the context of customer feedback, I said something offhand that someone pointed out was actually something worth paying attention to.  The point was about giving customers exactly what they asked for vs. thinking about why they were asking for what they were asking for and acting on that.

I heard a pretty inspirational discussion with someone who, 2 years ago at AYE, was talking about making big changes in his life and now has actually implemented some of those changes.  Lesson for me: Question constraints.

Another point about agile: Agile is about driving the cost of failure down to the point where you are not afraid to experiment and learn.  This applies to life as well..

For the past year and a half I've been working in the SQL Server Analysis Services team.  This week, we unveiled some details about the new project we're working on, project Gemini (aka Kilimanjaro), at the second annual BI conference.  A quick rundown of some of what the web is saying about it:

News:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-06BI08PR.mspx
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574DA006E1A0E.html?ref=technology
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_applications/microsoft_bi_gemini_lands_at_kilimanjaro.html
http://www.informationweek.com/news/business_intelligence/databases/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210700128&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_ALL
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Database/Microsoft-Focuses-on-BI-for-SQL-Server-Kilimanjaro/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-SQL-Server-Code-Named-Kilimanjaro-in-2010-95083.shtml
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1621
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39499503,00.htm
http://www.crn.com/software/210700189 

Blogs:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/mosha/archive/2008/10/06/so-what-is-exactly-project-gemini.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ashvinis/archive/2008/10/08/the-impact-of-gemini-or-the-power-of-a-simple-question.aspx
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/barbaro/archive/2008/10/07/the-future-of-sql-server-project-kilimanjaro-madison-and-gemini.aspx
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo/archive/2008/10/06/microsoft-bi-conference-2008-announcements-on-stage.aspx
http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!2818.entry
http://blogs.adatis.co.uk/blogs/timkent/archive/2008/10/07/day-1-at-the-bi-conference.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2008/10/06/project-gemini-building-models-and-analysing-data-from-excel.aspx
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2008/10/project-kilimanjaro-gemini-announcements/
http://sandeep-giri.blogspot.com/2008/10/microsoft-bi-vision-excel-bi-democracy.html

Webcasts, Podcasts, etc.:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msnse/0810/34416/Ted_Kummert_MBR.wmv
http://www.b-eye-network.com/listen/8729 - Amir Netz
http://www.b-eye-network.com/listen/8732 - Donald Farmer
http://www.b-eye-network.com/listen/8727 - Kamal Hathi