From Admin (Posted 7/25/2010 @ 02:26:43, in Production, linked 349 times)
It's almost time to unveil Viney@rd version 1.2.1. It includes a couple of new features which were true open points for those who work with Excel. Our target is to make their life easier an easier and this is the compass we follow for improving Viney@rd.
The most important feature is the subtotal feature. It builds on the corresponding Excel feature (remember, you already bought it, I do not want to sell it again to you!) to let you define a subtotal level and an aggregation function directly on the query form. The query result set will be broken like you selected it and applied the subtotals yourself directly in Excel. Even the outline will be there, to close and open details.
The second feature I implemented is assigning a name to the area occupied by the query result on the worksheet. These names appear in the upper left drop down command and let you select the areas where your queries have been placed. So queries output can be identified more easily within the workbook.
Now it's not actually a feature, but I also used a new set of better looking icons in place of the older ones, which had problems with the transparent background.
As usual, version 1.2.1 too will be available for testing before the official release, so stay tuned!
In the meanwhile, it's not a bad idea playing around with the current version, download it here It's fully functional and free for 90 days!
From Admin (Posted 5/18/2010 @ 22:30:20, in Production, linked 241 times)
It' s incredible the amount of feedback a video can have.
I've always been reluctant to resort to videos because they always imply oversimplification. More, they are complex to build, especially if you do not have the money for a decent video editing sw, a professional speaker and you are not a native English speaker.
Anyway, I've been asked about it by a few people and, at last, I made it.
First I made the configuration video because many non techies users demanded for more clarity about. Now Viney@rd setup places a link to a specific web page that describes the configuration process in detail and hosts the video.
Then I made the query basics video that shows an appropriate, though partial, Viney@rd scenario and I placed it on the site home page.
What's amazing is not the number of visits, few tenths, but the amount of feedback I got from it. Many Tweeps and FB friends just spent few minutes of their time actually watching it and commenting about. I actually asked for a couple of opinions or three, but many commented spontaneously. Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your attention.
Actually almost everybody complained about the sound (I know, but apparently I can't find a budget but decent microphone, I already tested four) and few about the overall impression. Many others liked the "authenticity" of me speaking.
At this point, I'm bought. I'm going to do a better demo asap and keep working on video tutorials and manuals.
A video is really worth 10000 words, but I said much fewer!
From Admin (Posted 3/15/2010 @ 22:56:38, in Production, linked 206 times)
Last week I had a discussion on UK Business Forums about Viney@rd. You can find it here .
Garyk gave me the opportunity to explain why some things are like they are in Viney@rd. This is an interesting discussion and I post it here, slightly edited
Garyk: "…so this actually builds the cubes in SSAS in the background? …"
Stray__Cat: "No, it does not build cubes in background, it works with the relational engine. This is done purposely for two reasons:
1) to support the free express editions
2) because the relational engine is known by far more people, consultants and end-users as well.
Garyk "OK so how will it do aggregates on dimensions if I say have 500,000 transactions spread over two years and I need periodic and yearly totals by several dimensions? Its alot of number crunching which is why the big BI solutions use cubes populated overnight or is it aimed purely at the SME market?"
Stray__Cat: This question requires an articulated reply.
Yes, you are right when you state that there's a step somewhere , depending on HW, data volume ,query complexity etc. which gets too high to jump over by the relational engine. And, Yes, Viney@rd is aimed to SMBs or to niche sectors in larger enterprises.
So, I do not want to compete with the many stellar "data cooking" solutions that are out there, I can't and they already did a fantastic job. At the end of the day, I do not run exactly a one man show but a close approximation of that.
I just want to address a couple of issues which rise in workgroups who make an heavy Excel usage.
First, files proliferate. They become confused and their relations become soon intricate. External references can't be reached because a file was moved, the format you got is not exactly the expected one etc.
Viney@rd enables you, without leaving Excel, to save your data in a central repository and work from there. Nothing prevents to build something custom that feeds data automatically (the db structure is very easy to understand and it is open) but even the average user, with Viney@rd, can adjust data as she needs they are. Often Excel sheets are used to collect data, and consolidating them requires an ad-hoc app; with Viney@rd this job is greatly eased, not to say already done. If you have to classify dimension values differently, to introduce a slicing level which does not exist on your system, simply add an attribute to the dimension and compile it on Excel. In other words, arrange your data how you need and make it yourself.
Second, your report layout, is not exactly the layout you need. Too often high level reporting is done by Excel because it can address a single cell while the usual tabular report layout can't. With Viney@rd you can tie a cell to a certain figure coming out from the repository. You can limit the numbers of rows returned, sync two queries' outputs or have the result of a calculation to be part of the query where condition. You have control on query results down to the single worksheet cell. So Viney@rd can refresh data even in the most complex layout without disrupting it.
If you need to analyze data, Viney@rd provides data connections to the models to place a pivot on top of them or load data into the new PowerPivot AddOn. They work far better than I could ever do, and you have already paid for those capabilities, so you must not buy them twice!
Should the queries become too slow, by Viney@rd data transformations you can add aggregated models and query from them. The automation of the process is still weak, but is one of the scheduled improvements in the near future.
If you want to learn something more about please visit http://www.straysoft.com.
If you want to be part of the Viney@rd 1.2 private beta contact me at vineyard@straysoft.com
If you want to try version 1.1 go here http://www.straysoft.com/Try.html
Thank you for your questions, Garyk; Take care.
From Admin (Posted 12/13/2009 @ 13:41:20, in Production, linked 308 times)
This is the fourth and last post of a series dedicated to Viney@rd features. Find the first here, the second here and the third here.
One of the Viney@rd groundbreaking features is enabling the user to fully control the model content by simply compiling a worksheet in Excel.
Two things, nonetheless, may be particularly annoying while doing this.
Viney@rd uses codes to identify the dimension key. If you compile the table by hand, remembering the right code for a dimension element may be a pain. So the "Assisted Input" feature is implemented. When turned on, a textbox and a list appear on the screen. Simply select the code column, type the few first letter of the dimension element description and it will be selected on the list, along with other matching elements. Simply hit enter or click on the element to add it to the table.
Rather than adding rows manually, it is likely the user will have to copy and paste data received from other sources. Often, human-made tables do not have codes but simply have descriptions. Getting the right codes is a very time consuming process. So, simply paste descriptions in the proper column and then click "Add Codes". The "Add Codes" command infers the code from the description. It works perfectly when the description is exactly the Viney@rd description, but can also "Guess" what the right code is. False positives are rare because, when it is "unsure", it rather leaves the code blank. The assisted input can help the user compile the codes left blank.
Now you can easyly test Viney@rd for free downloading it from here. The trial period lasts 90 days and it is absolutely free of charge and with no obligations whatsoever!
If you want to learn more about Viney@rd visit the web site!
From Admin (Posted 12/5/2009 @ 23:22:43, in Production, linked 363 times)
This is the third post of a series dedicated to Viney@rd features. Find the first here and the second here.
Viney@rd has its own query feature, which can draw tables on Excel worksheets, but it is aimed mainly at creating complex, refreshable, layouts. It is easy to understand that, while this is felt by many as a requirement not fulfilled by classical BI tools, it is not the best approach to data analysis. Controllers and data analysts require both. Nonetheless Excel has a powerful built-in feature to analyze data, the pivot tables.
One of the ideas underlying Viney@rd is not to cater twice what the user has already purchased, so, instead of duplicating the feature, I created something to integrate pivot tables with Viney@rd.
From Viney@rd client you can create a workbook connection to a model. The connection exposes as fields all the dimensions, the attributes and the measures. So, you can analyze all these data in the usual way.
With this feature you can also use Viney@rd data as a source for PowerPivot engine in the coming 2010 version, working with an even better analysis tool.
Try Viney@rd, 3 months, fully functional demo!Learn more about Viney@rd
From Admin (Posted 12/1/2009 @ 11:12:29, in Production, linked 437 times)
This is the second post of a series dedicated to Viney@rd features. Find the first here.
Viney@rd is not a mere reporting tool. While the ability to feed each single cell in a worksheet is very important, all the model building process made through MasterBook.xls has a very high value added. The key point is that no database knowledge is required and data can be saved within models directly by Excel.
To this respect, the user must not care too much about codes, Viney@rd can "ingest and metabolize" almost everything. In particular, you can have a dimension with both numerical and alphanumeric codes.
Albeit you can save everything into the repository, the nature of what you save influences the outcome of the filters that you place on the query. The filters with" <"and" >" signs may not work as expected. If you have mixed alpha and numbers like 001, 002,003, ToBeAssigned, InAssignement etc, there is no choice other than comparing alphabetically. If you compare alphabetically, the system does not know that numbers are numbers, so they will come before letters and 10 will be before 9. The best way to avoid this is padding the numbers with 0s, that is 001 instead of 1, 013 instead of 13 etc., a rather tedious work.
Nonetheless, Viney@rd is smart enough to recognize dimensions, or attributes, which are entirely numeric, and compare them accordingly.
So, the user must not worry about things like defining objects as numeric or alpha, or padding the numbers to sort or filter them correctly .
From Admin (Posted 11/25/2009 @ 13:51:09, in Production, linked 570 times)
This is the
first post of a series focused on a single Viney@rd feature, to let you know
about those features which are not immediately visible but, all together, build
up Viney@rd strength.
Let’s start
with query synchronization.
In a
workbook you can often have two similar queries, which differ only from few
particulars, mainly conditions. A typical case is the current year vs previous year or budget comparison.
A less trivial case occurs when comparing not homogeneous data. For example,
you have main query with customer and sales, but your customers are both other
companies and individuals. For companies you have a credit model showing the
customer’s financial situation, for the individuals you have a model about
customer’s demographic. You want to combine the three models in the same
spreadsheet area.
The
synchronization feature let you sort and filter the results of a query
according to another query.
Please note
that this feature is hard to find even in very expensive reporting tool and is
never implemented in such a pragmatic manner.
For
example, you may wish to get your customers YTD value and have the
corresponding budget aside. Invoices and budget will likely be in two different
models, and the customer’s order is not guaranteed to be the same; more, new
customers may be present in the YTD query but not in the budget query. Syncing
the budget query with the YTD query means that Viney@rd will scan the first
location of the YTD query and will output the budget data in the same order as
in the YTD query.
YTD Query
Customer
Value
Customer A
7000
Customer
B
6500
Customer
C
3000
Customer
D
2000
Budget Query
Customer
Budget
Customer C
3500
Customer A
5000
Customer B
5500
Customer E
500
If the budget query is synced to the
YTD query the result as printed on Excel will be
Combined Result
Customer
Value
Customer
Budget
Customer A
7000
Customer A
5000
Customer B
6500
Customer B
5500
Customer C
3000
Customer C
3500
Customer D
2000
Notice that
budget customers are now printed in the same order as YTD customers. Customer D
has budget columns blank as there was no corresponding member in the budget
query results. Customer E, which has no YTD value, is not shown, thus causing a
filter effect.
Please
notice that custom sorts may be implemented with this feature. For example:
refresh the YTD query, sort the customers in the order you want, refresh the
budget query. The order in which the budget results will be printed is the same
as in Excel, but Viney@rd always start scanning from the first cell if the
position of the YTD query as defined in Viney@rd.
Notice also
that we have now two customer columns. This layout is usually redundant and
unwanted. To hide the second query dimensions, uncheck the “Show Row Hdg.” Checkbox. This checkbox also works with stand alone
queries, preventing the row headers to be written on the worksheet.
Synchronizing
two queries is an easy task, just create the two queries, go to the query to be
synced and pick the main query in the drop down. That’s all!
From Admin (Posted 11/13/2009 @ 12:48:05, in Production, linked 340 times)
I've been asked about how Viney@rd relates with the environment that Microsoft is designing with PowerPivot, Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010 upgrades (Gregory and Rob, thank you for considering!). I didn't have had the occasion to dig deep in all those applications yet, so I want to lay only few points that appear quite acquired so far.
I must confess that there has been a moment when I feared that Viney@rd was doomed to become a poor copy. Luckily, some of the ideas which Viney@rd is based upon are such that the others are too snob to implement them ;o)
1) Power Pivot takes Excel ability to handle and analyze the result of a complex dataset to the next level. Viney@rd, though it can organize query results in tables, can address a single cell or a single row, removing headers from tables. So complex Excel layouts can be preserved upon query refresh with no intermediate "database" sheets or VBA. This reconciles Excel layout versatility with the ability to refresh data from the DB. I've seen so many controllers or sales analysts flaunting an Excel printout at me saying: "I do not need drill down, I need this. It takes half a day to make, make it refresh with the click of a button", that I decided to build the app.
2) PowerPivot can coalesce data from multiple data sources in a single, high performance "blob"; Viney@rd gently takes you to incrementally creating a datamart federation. The business user, likely, is not even aware of what's doing. PowerPivot requires a database working knowledge, Viney@rd does not require any.
Anyway, nothing forbids the experienced user to consume Viney@rd data from PowerPivot. She can go on tables directly or use the flat view which is created together with every model.
I'm also looking to PowerPivot high speed engine as a mean to boost Viney@rd performances.
3) The entire Microsoft's castle is devoted to reporting, ad hoc query, data analysis etc. but cannot modify data. With Viny@rd you can move, change and enrich data with no technical knowledge.
All these points deserve more attention but, by now, Is unwise to go deeper without a thorough analysis of what the new applications can do. I'm just waiting to see some nearly final versions to run an extensive test. Meanwhile Office 2010 is not supported,
Enjoy
From Admin (Posted 11/6/2009 @ 15:41:12, in Production, linked 354 times)
Building version 1.1 has been a tough work, that's why I disappeared for a while. New features have been added but, most of all, a lot of testing has been done, making this release a lot more stable than the previous. The leit-motiv of this release is "Listen to the users".
First, I focused on making the software easier to configure. Working with SQL server is at the root of the issue: non technical users must always find out a SQL instance to connect to or install a free version on their machine. Both these tasks are not trivial for some business user. Unluckily, there are few things to do about that without radically changing the product proposition. I've been suggested to support MS Access as well; I do not reject the idea in principle but it requires a fairly large amount of work and automatically downsizes the application. So, be prepared to see some news on this topic in the near future.
In the meanwhile, I introduced a configuration wizard that guides users through the configuration steps in a colloquial way.
Windows authentication is now supported, making configuration somewhat easier, especially after installing the SQL server express versions. From a technical perspective, anyway, lacking this support was a big turnoff.
There is a totally new set of demo data, more consistent and sensible, based on Microsoft's Adventure Works database. Some users may also be more familiar with it.
The new "web bar" feature is aimed at communicating with the users; given the downloads I had, I got too little feedback. So I encourage all of you to make use of the new "Complain" feature that will land directly on me everything you need to tell. Actually I was thinking to name the feature "Yell at me", but it looked rather unprofessional. Beside the complaints, you can access directly the knowledge base, the user forum, this blog and the user manual. Do not hesitate to use the forums either, too few use it now and mail me directly. I think that sharing your thoughts should be an advantage for everyone. (actually, I've been told that the forum look is too old style, but I'm working on it, just be a little patient!).
On the client side, I added an option to hide the query row headers. This is useful for synchronized queries placed side by side, like previous versus current year. I will never stress enough that this feature is very hard to be found in other query packages.
Finally, a slightly better look has been designed and a number of bugs have been fixed. See the knowledge base to learn about the fixed known issues.
So, I release this version to you. I'd really love to hear your feedback. If you buy Viney@rd now, I'm happy, if you don't and you want to explain me why, I'm even happier because this gives me a chance to make you change your mind.
From Admin (Posted 9/14/2009 @ 16:14:45, in Production, linked 558 times)
Welcome! From today (09/14/2009) Viney@rd version 1.0.1 is available!
What’s new in version 1.0.1?
The aggregation transformation has been re-implemented. Now the user has more control over the transformation, both targeting existing models ore creating new aggregation. Old transformations are still valid but require editing before being run again!
In previous versions, for models created by copy or aggregation, the data connection for pivot tables creation failed. This bug is resolved.
A fast visual effect has been introduced in tabbed forms, to improve the overall look and feel.
Other minor bugs have been corrected.
Go here to download the new version. Simply install this version over the old one to update the installation. Refer to the user manual for further details.
So far the institutional communication, but I would like to say a few words about releasing a minor version.
It appears that a minor version should be an easy release. Version 1.0.1, actually, corrects a few bugs and streamlines a feature that was already implemented. Completing development has been rather easy. Completing the other tasks was not as easy as you could think. StraySoft is an extremely lean company, so I did everything myself, and yet it took a full day to cope with all the details.
First I had to update the “About” screens on both the documents.
Than I had to update the manual. I changed the Aggregation Transformation chapter, than I added a “What’s New” section and an “Update Section”. I also updated the screenshot in the manual.
Than I had to rebuild the setup package, removing the old files and adding the new ones.
After creating the new packages I tested setup with XP and Vista, both on a clean machine and as an update.
At last I updated the web site to let you download the new versions and leave the old available.
You can easily understand that it is a fair amount of work. Sometimes it happens to read rants about “that simple application update that is clearly six lines of code, at can be done in five minutes, and if you do not do that you are a ”. Maybe it’s five minutes coding, but weeks of other tasks. Think of it.
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Viney@rd has its own query feature, which can draw tables on Excel worksheets, but it is aimed mainly at creating complex, refreshable, layouts. It is easy to understand that, while this is felt by many as a requirement not fulfilled by classical BI tools, it is not the best approach to data analysis. Controllers and data analysts require both. Nonetheless Excel has a powerful built-in feature to analyze data, the pivot tables.
Welcome! From today (09/14/2009) Viney@rd version 1.0.1 is available!
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