CCG prides itself with its affiliations with numerous professional organizations.  As a member of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), we participate in SQL Saturday training events, and as a member of America’s SAP Users Group (ASUG) we participate in its conferences.  All events are venues for learning, networking, sharing best practices and as a sponsor.

To request more information, click on the presenter’s name.

Rapid Development with SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise: Discovery to Delivery at PSCU
Presented by Boone Parnell, Senior Consultant for CCG, and Annie Cox from PSCU.

Through teamwork and collaboration, PSCU and Convergence Consulting Group were able to eliminate both a manual process for two product groups, and the need for service centers having to retrieve this info manually in order to deliver it to their clients – thus reducing the risk of reporting errors due to the manual nature of their previous report. The consulting team was able design, develop, test and deploy the necessary universes and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence assets in weeks, meeting the business needs and delivering value. The content of the presentation included discussion of the collaboration necessary to accomplish the tasks from discovering, loading, and QA of the source data; rapid prototyping of the reports using web intelligence; and the distribution/ bursting to clients using the @BOUSER in report.

Using BusinessObjects Data Services to Implement Complex Business Rules in a Rapidly Changing Environment
Presented by Greg Frasca, CCG Senior Consultant, and Michelle Watts from Hillsborough County Public Schools.

With more than 200,000 students and 15,000 teachers, Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) is the 8th largest school district in the United States. The district is nationally recognized for consistently valuing its data as a major factor in determining the advancement of students and educators. This is most demonstrated by the numerous state, federal, and private foundation grants it has been awarded to study the K-12 education environment. With more than 400 categories of teachers and the need to be able to evaluate each one according to specific requirements, there is no lack of new challenges to the people that support the ever-changing functional and technical landscape. CCG and HCPS presented a case study on some of the most important challenges faced and the commitment to solving them during their five-year relationship. Topics ranged from the need to standardize guerilla tactics, to facilitating the highly varying business rules of three simultaneous grants in a single warehouse. The presentation showed how the client was able to benefit from numerous features of SAP Data Services by creating relationships in the data that weren’t previously available, and getting timely results delivered to decision makers, SMEs and, most importantly, the teachers themselves.

A look into what recruiters really want to see
Presented by Todd Davis, Operations Manager for CCG.  Davis is responsible for recruiting and hiring some of the industry’s top tier BI Consultants. He is a graduate of the University of Florida and has been instrumental in the placement of more than 1,000 professionals over a ten-year period. Davis regularly gives talks at several colleges and professional groups.

In his presentation, Davis advises what hiring managers really want to see throughout the hiring process. The session walks through the basics that every successful candidate should know: Resume tips, Job search and Interview tips, and more. If you are in a job search, considering one or just want to be prepared for one, the information he shares is what “they” are really looking for.

Lookup Between The Lines is Data Late Than Never:  Strategies in ETL processing
Presented by James McAuliffe, BI Solution Architect for CCG.  McAuliffe has been working as a professional software developer since 1993, and has worked with clients of all sizes, from local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. He has concentrated in the last few years on Microsoft BI technologies. In his current speaking engagements, McAuliffe is excited to share  the new capabilities that SQL Server 2008 brings to the information professional.  (Note, since this presentation, McAuliffe has had speaking engagements presenting the newest BI capabilities of SQL Server 2012.)

In this presentation, McAuliffe discusses how fully cached look-ups are fit for performance in ETL processing. These types of look-ups use a query to pull a limited data set into the SSIS memory cache; then, in processing, an exact match is made on look-up values to provide the match look-up value.  The challenge is when needing to match more than one value, or between look-up types. It is possible, and this session will examine some solutions.  McAuliffe also talks about making allowances for missing data when running ETL processes, strategies for late arriving dimensions and late arriving facts.

SSIShare The Code, Man:  Applying shared code sources to SSIS processing
Also presented by James McAuliffe.  In this session, McAuliffe discusses how, for may SSIS scenarios, a desired outcome is to implement logic or rules that are already in use in existing enterprise applications. The only significant difference is that the implementation is done in a bulk data loading scenario. Many times the logic being applied is complex and multi-step and enterprises have proprietary rules systems that need consistent application throughout the code base. McAuliffe examines a scenario where complex logic from shared code sources can be applied in SSIS processing.

For more information about PASS, SQL Saturday, ASUG, or our speakers, please contact info@ccgBI.com.

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