Sunday 22 June 2008

Meeting Michael Armstrong-Smith


Everyone in my team lives by the oracle Discoverer handbook by Michael & Darlene Armstrong-Smith, so it was a great honour to speak to him at ODTUG in New Orleans.

Remember if you are a UKOUG member you can get 30% off this and many other Oracle books

Michael gave a great presentation on manipulating dates but gave away other tips as well. The one I learnt most from was querying on outer joins, and the best way to explain it is to let Michael explain it himself in his own blog

He also talked about setting up master business areas as a way to keep everything tidy, his presentation can also be downloaded

OBIEE is a fantastic BI tool and a lot is being put into it by Oracle, but Discoverer will continue to be the main tool for users for a long time. One worry I do have is that as users listen to the messaging around OBIEE is that they understand the need for better BI a long time before they understand the need for a Enterprise BI tool. Requests I receive for Discoverer reports are getting more and more complicated and it is very frustrating when you know that they really need to be investing in an enterprise tool.

It is a pity this was the only Discoverer presentation at the conference
as Discoverer still has a long life. I am still growing this part of my team along side the OBIEE Plus skills.

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