What’s the use of putting out reports that no one reads? Properly created dashboards are graphical representations that put data in a context for your audience, and they look really cool! How cool? You’ll find out when you see the dazzling examples in Excel 2007 Dashboards & Reports For Dummies. And, before long, everyone’s eyes will be riveted to your dashboards and reports too! This revolutionary guide shows you how to turn Excel into your own personal Business Intelligence tool. You’ll learn the fundamentals of using Excel 2007 to go beyond simple tables to creating dashboard-studded reports that wow management. Get ready to catch dashboard fever as you find out how to use basic analysis techniques, build advanced dashboard components, implement advanced reporting techniques, and import external date into your Excel reports. Discover how to: Unleash the power of Excel as a business intelligence tool Create dashboards that communicate and get noticed Think about your data in a new way Present data more effectively and increase the value of your reports Create dynamic labels that support visualization Represent time and seasonal trending Group and bucket data Display and measure values versus goals Implement macro-charged reporting Using Excel 2007 as a BI tool is the most cost-efficient way for organizations of any size create powerful and insightful reports and distribute throughout the enterprise. And Excel 2007 Dashboards and Reports for Dummies is the fastest you for you to catch dashboard fever!

This Wrox Blox explores Service Orientated Architecture and the Enterprise Service Bus, focusing on how it can be implemented using Microsoft BizTalk Server. It explains the need for SOA Architecture in an enterprise business and looks at the key Business and IT Drivers in business, how they can interact, and where there are conflicts that SOA can help resolve. Specifically, the author discusses Microsoft ESB Guidance and how, by using BizTalk 2006, ESB implementation can provide a solid platform for SOA development; management across the IT and Business Space with the Governance and tools provided in the ESB Toolkit; pointers to online resources, including guides on installing and deploying ESB; and how to avoid common SOA pitfalls. The target audience for this Wrox Blox is IT Managers, Business Managers, Architects, Developers, and Business Analysts who want to find architectural guidance information on Service Oriented Architecture, BizTalk, and Enterprise Service Bus.

Pro BizTalk 2006 is a high-end resource that is based on real feedback from BizTalk developers. Authors George Dunphy and Ahmed Metwally are well known within the BizTalk community, and here they cover topics not discussed in other books, like performance tuning, scalability, and administration. This book also features examples of specific, real-world implementations.

The purpose of this book is to remove the veil of secrecy surrounding SAP upgrade techniques and concepts, and to provide the user with a detailed description of the steps needed for a successful implementation. Today more than 12 million people in 120 countries who are working for 36,200 companies are using SAP on a regular basis. This popular, but very complex software system must be constantly reconfigured and upgraded to accommodate its latest releases. Upgrading SAP provides a complete overview of the process to upgrade from one SAP release to the next one and explains with detailed descriptions, the use of all relevant SAP upgrade tools. Along with a technical description of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (AS), it also discusses personnel issues and the economic ramifications of such an upgrade project. Examples in this book are based on various different SAP products and releases, such as SAP NetWeaver 2004, 2004S (also known as NetWeaver 7.0 and 7.1), and SAP Business Suite 2005 with SAP ERP 6.0, BI, CRM, SCM, and SRM. Conceived as both a teaching book and as a reference manual, it covers all the techniques, background information, notes, tips, and tricks needed for any SAP upgrade project. A CD-ROM accompanies the book with templates and outlines for the upgrading process, as well as third-party SAP-related material.

In order to comply with government and industry regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and COBIT, enterprises have to constantly detect, validate, and report unauthorized change and out-of-compliance actions on their IT infrastructure. The Tivoli Compliance Insight Manager solution allows organizations to improve the security of their information systems by capturing comprehensive log data, correlating this data through sophisticated log interpretation and normalization, and communicating results through a dashboard and a full set of audit and compliance reporting. We discuss the business context of security audit and compliance software for organizations, and we show a typical deployment within a business scenario. This IBM Redbooks publication is a valuable resource for security officers, administrators, and architects who wish to understand and deploy a centralized security audit and compliance solution.

Deliver BI Solutions with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Maximize the powerful BI tools available in PerformancePoint 2007 with help from this practical guide. You will learn how to collect and store data, monitor progress, analyze performance, distribute dynamic reports, and create maintainable projects and forecasts. Business Intelligence with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 provides full details on creating scorecards and dashboards, performing advanced analysis on data, and setting up business plans. You will also learn how to integrate PerformancePoint with ProClarity, Excel 2007, and SQL Server Reporting Services. Configure, deploy, and secure all the PerformancePoint components Create KPIs, scorecards, reports, and dashboards with the Dashboard Designer Create business models with the Planning Business Modeler and create budgets and forecasts with Excel 2007 Enable advanced data analysis with PerformancePoint Server and ProClarity tools Take advantage of the enhanced analytic capabilities of Excel 2007 Use SQL Server Reporting Services for analytics Align performance with organizational objectives

This book is part of the Deployment Guide series. It provides a step-by-step guide for deploying Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager V7.1. It is intended to help an IBM or business partner service person to plan and perform the deployment of the product. Please note that the additional material referenced in the text is not available from IBM.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication follows The IBM System Storage Tape Libraries Guide for Open Systems, SG24-5946, and can help you plan, install, and configure IBM Ultrium LTO tape drives, as well as the TS1120 Tape Drive and libraries in i5/OS® environments. The book focuses on the setup and customization of these drives and libraries. The first part of the book gives an overview of the System i™ family of servers and describes how to attach and configure the drives and libraries. It also covers basic installation and administration. We describe the sharing and partitioning of libraries and explain the concept and usage of the Advanced Library Management System (ALMS). In the second part of the book, we document how to use these products with Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS), how to implement Tape Encryption, and how to use the IBM TS7520 Virtualization Engine™ with i5/OS. This book can help IBM personnel, Business Partners, and customers to better understand and implement the IBM Ultrium LTO product line, and also the TS1120 Tape Drive attached to System i servers. We assume that the reader is familiar with tape drives and libraries and has a basic understanding of System i servers and i5/OS.

Your Hands-On Guide to SAP Business Information Warehouse Give your company the competitive edge by delivering up-to-date, pertinent business reports to users inside and outside your enterprise. SAP Business Information Warehouse Reporting shows you how to construct Enterprise Data Warehouses, create workbooks and queries, analyze and format results, and supply meaningful reports. Learn how to use the BEx and Web Analyzers, Web Application Designer, Visual Composer, and Information Broadcaster. You will also find out how to forecast future business trends, build enterprise portals and websites, and tune performance. Group data into InfoCubes and DataStore Objects and generate reports using queries and workbooks Work with the BEx Analyzer, Web Analyzer, and Query Designer Build queries and reports using the Business Administration Workbench Add attachments and drill-through using Document Integration and RRI Format and distribute results using Report Designer and Information Broadcaster Extend functionality with Enterprise Portal, Data Modeling, and Visual Composer Deploy charts, maps, diagrams, and unit of measure conversions Predict trends and possible outcomes using SBC and Integrated Planning Generate HTML pages using Enterprise Reporting and Web Application Designer Create BI-based corporate Web and intranet sites using SAP Enterprise Portal

IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.2 is a powerful monitoring product from IBM, that is easily customizable and provides real-time and historical data that enables you to quickly diagnose and solve issues through the IBM Tivoli Enterprise Portal component. This common, flexible, and easy-to-use browser interface helps users to quickly isolate and resolve potential performance problems. This IBM Redbooks publication presents a deployment guide for IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2. We cover planning, installing, and configuration of IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2 for small, medium, and large environments. In addition, we provide some case studies, such as IBM Tivoli Monitoring V5.x migration, event management integration, and Agent Builder. Agent Builder is a very powerful tool that you can use to develop your own monitoring agents. In order to show you how this tool can be used in a real life scenario, we have created a 30 minute video that you can launch from the ITSO Web site. We have also added an appendix that discusses IBM Tivoli Monitoring sales engagement planning for Business Partners and Solution Developers. The target audience for this documentation is IT Specialists and Business Partners who will be working on IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2 implementations and proof of concepts. Please note that the additional material referenced in the text is not available from IBM.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we describe the capabilities and ways to use the IBM Tivoli® Application Dependency Discovery Manager (TADDM). It is becoming critical for enterprises to track the IT resources in their environment and, more importantly, the dependencies of their business applications on various components. TADDM provides rich capabilities that discover the components of a complex infrastructure and their interdependencies. In this book, we provide insight into the TADDM capabilities and architecture. We include recommended procedures for installing and configuring TADDM, tips and techniques for populating the TADDM database and customizing its use, performance considerations, and information about how TADDM integrates with operational management programs.

The IBM Tivoli Monitoring solution is the next generation of the IBM Tivoli family of products that help monitor and manage critical hardware and software in distributed environments. This IBM Redbooks publication provides a practical guide to implementing, using and optimizing IBM Tivoli Monitoring, including best practices for performance tuning, sizing, high availability, scalability, reporting, IBM Change and Configuration Management Database integration and firewall considerations.

In order to improve the performance and operational efficiency of businesses worldwide, a customer using SAP® wanted to establish a global business program to define and implement a standardized, group-wide business process architecture and associated master data for the parameterization of the group of software tools. The expected growth of the number of users and the size of the database would be at a level never reached by other customers, however, so IBM® was asked to undertake the following tasks: * Test the application to be sure that it can sustain such growth. This project illustrates the new near real time business intelligence (BI) context approached by customers who want the ability to rapidly analyze their business data to gain market shares. Data today comes from many diverse global sources and needs to be merged into an intelligent data warehouse. This IBM Redbooks® publication describes the testing that was done in terms of performance and manageability in an SAP NetWeaver® BI and DB2® environment on IBM System p™ when scaling a client's solution to a data warehouse of 60 terabytes (TB). This book resulted from a joint cooperative effort that included the PSSC, the IBM/SAP International Competency Center, the DB2-SAP Center of Excellence, SAP AG, and a customer. The customer involved in this project is a worldwide company employing more than 250,000 employees with factories and logistics operations in almost every country in the world. This project involved multiple technical skills and multiple products, as described here: * Chapter 1, "Project overview: business objectives, architecture, infrastructure, and results" on page 1, summarizes the entire project, starting from the business needs through the description of the environment and options used, to the results achieved. This chapter can be viewed as an executive summary from an IT specialist perspective. * Chapter 2, "The SAP NetWeaver BI perspective" on page 47; Chapter 3, "The DB2 perspective" on page 127; and Chapter 4, "The IBM System p perspective" on page 287, provide detailed views of the project from the perspectives of SAP specialists, DB2 specialists, and System p and AIX® specialists, respectively. * Chapter 5, "The system storage perspective" on page 319, and Chapter 6, "The Tivoli Storage Manager perspective" on page 349, describe the storage environment and the manageability issues in such a large environment. * Finally Appendix A, "The scripts used" on page 395, provides the scripts that we needed to develop for this project.

If you want to build dynamic Web sites that encourage users to interact with them, PHP and MySQL are among the best tools you’ll find. PHP is a scripting language designed specifically for use on the Web, while MySQL is a database management system that works with it perfectly. Best of all, they’re free. It’s hard to beat that combination! PHP & MySQL Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies is kind of one-stop shopping for the information you need to get up and running with these tools and put them to good use. It’s divided into six handy minibooks that cover setting up your environment, PHP programming, using MySQL, security, PHP extensions, and PHP Web applications. They make it easy to create a Web site where visitors can sign on, use shopping carts, complete forms, and do business with your business. It’s easy to find what you need in this handy guide. You’ll discover how to: Find and acquire all the tools you need and set up your development environment Build PHP scripts to make your Web site work Create a MySQL database that visitors can access Summarize and sort data results Design and implement user access control Build a shopping cart application Create extensions that make your site more useful With PHP & MySQL Web Development All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies by your side, you’ll be a Web site guru before you know it!

Written by a team of expert SQL users, this comprehensive resource approaches performance tuning from a new perspective by showing you a methodical scientific approach to diagnose performance problems. The book first walks you through how to discover bottlenecks when something is wrong and you'll then learn how to identify and remove the problems that are causing poor performance. You'll discover preventive measures you can take to try to avoid a performance problem entirely and you'll learn how to achieve better performance.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the IBM Tivoli® Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) family of products. The Composite Application Manager family currently consists of: - IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for WebSphere® The aim of IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager is to simplify and enhance distributed application management. Application components can reside on multiple servers, across different platforms and J2EE environments, even through mainframes. The complexity of understanding and solving application-related problems, typically around performance issues, requires a cohesive set of tools to provide an end-to-end view of the application. The discussion that we provide in this book mainly consists of the basic installation and configuration of the products. The discussion is aimed at augmenting the information provided in the product manuals. Consult the appropriate product manual before starting to implement these products. We provide usage scenarios in this book as a demonstration of using these products in our sample environment. We use a single application environment that can be managed by all of the products.

Perfectly intelligent programmers often struggle when forced to work with SQL. Why? Joe Celko believes the problem lies with their procedural programming mindset, which keeps them from taking full advantage of the power of declarative languages. The result is overly complex and inefficient code, not to mention lost productivity.This book will change the way you think about the problems you solve with SQL programs.. Focusing on three key table-based techniques, Celko reveals their power through detailed examples and clear explanations. As you master these techniques, you’ll find you are able to conceptualize problems as rooted in sets and solvable through declarative programming. Before long, you’ll be coding more quickly, writing more efficient code, and applying the full power of SQL Filled with the insights of one of the world’s leading SQL authorities - noted for his knowledge and his ability to teach what he knows Focuses on auxiliary tables (for computing functions and other values by joins), temporal tables (for temporal queries, historical data, and audit information), and virtual tables (for improved performance) Presents clear guidance for selecting and correctly applying the right table technique

This IBM® Redbooks® publication is written as part of the deployment guide series. This book provides a step-by-step guide for deploying ITCAM for Response Time V6.2. This deployment guide can help an IBM or business partner service person plan and perform the deployment of the product. The discussion of ITCAM for Response Time includes the explanation of product architecture and its components. We discuss planning and sizing considerations before you implement the product and some guidelines on setting up service engagement for the product. The deployment explained in the book would fit for a demonstration or a small deployment system, although the information is highly relevant for larger deployment engagements. This book also explains some usage scenario that can be performed for demonstrating the product.

You're intelligent, right? So you've already figured out that Business Intelligence can be pretty valuable in making the right decisions about your business. But you’ve heard at least a dozen definitions of what it is, and heard of at least that many BI tools. Where do you start? Business Intelligence For Dummies makes BI understandable! It takes you step by step through the technologies and the alphabet soup, so you can choose the right technology and implement a successful BI environment. You'll see how the applications and technologies work together to access, analyze, and present data that you can use to make better decisions about your products, customers, competitors, and more. You’ll find out how to: Understand the principles and practical elements of BI Determine what your business needs Compare different approaches to BI Build a solid BI architecture and roadmap Design, develop, and deploy your BI plan Relate BI to data warehousing, ERP, CRM, and e-commerce Analyze emerging trends and developing BI tools to see what else may be useful Whether you’re the business owner or the person charged with developing and implementing a BI strategy, checking out Business Intelligence For Dummies is a good business decision.

This book is written as part of the deployment guide series. It provides a step-by-step guide for deploying IBM® Tivoli® Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) for Web Resources V6.2. This deployment guide will help an IBM Business Partner or service person plan and perform the deployment of the product. The discussion on ITCAM for Web Resources describes product architecture and components, planning and sizing considerations, and guidelines on setting up service engagements. Although the information is highly relevant for larger deployment engagements, it is also suitable for a small deployment system. The extensive deployment and usage scenarios can also help you demonstrate the product.