Business Intelligence

Work on BI project for Commercialware

Nov.2000

We have been directed to work on a project called "BusinessIntelligence". Insert your own joke here.

Kelly + Micha are taking the lead on this, I'll be providinginfrastructure/implementation support as well as doing the migrationfrom linux based to windows based sales demo.

The fundamental idea is that people in various roles in the co need tohave access to customer/order info and they don't currently have asingle framework in which do to so.

Enter: The Customer 360. php front end, the demo usesMySQLbut it canrun against any db (Note to self: proof of concept Oracle integrationon unix-y systems).

Customer 360 provides role-based access to all info aboutcustomers/orders. read/write/create/update permissions affects UI (e.g.input boxes -vs- straight text, button displayed/not displayed). Graphscharting cust hist of returns/problems/purchase amounts/etc generateddynamically via php graphics lib. Intended use is catalog/retail callcenters, proof of concept is solid enough that it will be migrated toJSP (rdc runs WebSphere) and released as a product.

Update:
the pains of lin - win sales demo migration. Need to come upwith install instructions that will allow salespeople to installApache, PHP, MySQL on Windows, load the web pages and database, andhave it all actually work.

BI on Windows 98 SE

instructions have been sent to Rose, along with all relevant files.

Success at last.

3.11.2001 - AddingWinCVSto the mix, which is anincredibly welldocumented application...

update: some changes were made to the structure, soI will be revampingthe documentation and adding a new module (phpMyAdmin) as well.

2.13.2001 - I now have gotten the test system to theexact same pointas Rose's laptop (font errors and all) and will start determining whatthe solution is for this...

There was a problem with the fontroot variable somehow,which we've fixed, and now the graphs are showing, thoughinconsistently. Rose will be providing us with a summary of the thegraphs that are misbehaving and we will fix them.

2.14.2001 - provided Rose with phpMyAdmin andinstructions, Kelly issending her an sql file to update her local db with.

Rose has become a regular PHP wizard. phpMyAdmin is workingon her machine, on to the next step: updating her db.

2.20.2001 - new build has been published, along withnew install guide.Installation should now take about 15 minutes and 3 reboots on Win98SE. Note that on a Linux laptop it would take about 3 minutes and zeroreboots. Just thought I'd mention that.

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