Thursday, April 16, 2009

Power tools

I've been working with couple of interesting (great) tools recently. These tools are for those with an attitude and willingness to play around until get it right. “do it right the first time” addicts are doomed!

1) Visualization tool ManyEyes
2) Pentaho – NP and I were paring and quickly we felt that the ETL piece can save you time, money and reveal interesting insights about your data. I would recommend this to any friend who wants to extract, load or want to build a data warehouse application.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Other people's view (perspective)

I keep getting conflicting stories. The story of the blind men and an elephant (originated from India) shows why we need to consider other people's view (OPV) before moving forward with any project.

The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe.

A wise man explains to them:

"All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned."