About me - Russell Barber

[russellbarber]

Hello - and thanks for setting up this resource.

I'm Russell Barber and I'm the Systems Development and Reporting Manager for the Hadlow Group - Hadlow College, West Kent College and Ashford College. I've been in the role for 4 months, and Unit-E is one of two MIS systems we use, so my knowledge of it is growing but limited...!

Previous education experience was working for a university and before that a local authority. Previous to that I worked as a software developer.

Skillset includes SQL, DB admin, Java, C++, C, SSRS/SSAS/SSIS and database warehousing and cubes. I'm currently working on a data warehouse so we can bring data in from the multiple different systems we use across the group and generate group-wide reports and cubes. I'd really be interested if anyone who has done anything similar.

[robinwilson16]

Hello Russell

Thanks for signing up and hope you find this forum useful.
I will keep adding things to it as and when I get the chance.

The data cubes sound really interesting and it is not something I have explored before so I would be interested to hear more about the advantages of that and how it works and performs, etc.

Robin

[russellbarber]

Hi Robin,

Cubes are really useful in view data in different ways - groupings/aggregates etc. I'm sure I'm not alone in getting numerous requests for data that are only slightly different - can we have this grouped by site/age/etc.... Cubes let you do this (or let the user do this) really quickly on a verified dataset.

Russell

[robinwilson16]

Yes that is very true!

Often we have reports already in existence but people always want to cut the data in a slightly different way requiring another query to be developed for the purpose.

I do feel it is something I should look at in more detail.

[AlanB]

Would be very interested in what you create and what others have done.
We haven't used SSAS but use tsql cubes for creating some datasets - particularly handy around SAR season.
We've managed to claw together data from finance, payroll and unitE to create a costing model showing income/costs by area. Took a while and involved lots of fixes as not everything links up but still not a bad indicator.