Zurker: How to own its shares for free??

Zurker: How to own its shares for free??


Zurker is a new Social Network. Unlike Facebook and MySpace, Zurker is co-owned by it's users. That's right, you become the co-owner, you are the future stockholder of Zurker. By helping Zurker grow, you have the potential of helping your wallet grow.

How Zurker Works?

Zurker is becoming a new mantra for the people who hang up with social networking websites today. Every member of zurker is entitled for a stake in the form of vshares (virtual shares). Once a member registered with zurker, he can refer people by using the referral code. When your valid referral joins the network you will be getting credits on your account and later can be converted to vshares. Currently vshares can be bought directly for cash also. Most of us have missed to buy the shares of facebook which is now million dollars worth, but we have all chances to buy the shares of Zurker in form of vshares. The idea behind this vshares is to get funds for the company from public instead of large venture capitalists as well as to make every member earn through it once it becomes a corporation like facebook and MySpace.

The site is very straight forward and maintains an open book concept where the company accounts is open to view by every member. Anyone can see the income and expenses incurred by the company by going to the open books section. Currently joining Zurker is not available to open public and allowed only through referral invites being in beta stage. So you can request your friends or relatives for an invite to join Zurker. You can also join zurker by clicking my referral link:

http://www.zurker.in/i-336988-irxemfntfb

People behind the Zurker

Most of us know that the founder of social networking giant Mark Zukerburg faced court trials for stolen idea of facebook from Cameron Winklevoss, his twin brother Tyler and Divya Narendra (an Indian). There was a news that Facebook had paid $65 million to settle the claim. These people have developed this Zurker with this new idea. So there is no doubt that Zurker will become as big as Facebook being they are the original masters behind the facebook concept.

When you help a social network grow, such as Facebook, you help the founders and investors put money in their pockets but when Zurker grows, you help yourself to put money in your pocket.

Zurker allows you to earn money while being socially connected. A free invitation to join and a free share in the company for every referred member, isn't it great?

Join and have free shares with fun of social networking

Publishing Package from a Cube

Using Framework Manager, we can publish a package which could either be sourced from a database or a cube. Here we will be discussing on how to publish a package in Framework Manager, with cube as a source. Below listed are the steps to be followed in the process:

1. Create a cube (.mdc file) and save it in any location in the server.

2. Open Framework Manager and click on “Create a New Project”.

3. Give the name and location for your project and click “OK”.

4. Select the language for your project and click “OK”.

5. Now, you will get the “Metadata Wizard” with options to “Select Metadata Source”.

6. Click on “Data Sources” and “Next” to create a new data source for connecting our cube.

7. Click on “New” for creating a new data source and click “Next”.

8. Specify a name for the new data source to be created and click on “Next”.

9. Now, select the “Type” for the new data source connection. Select “Cognos PowerCube” for type.

10. Now, specify the location of the cube (.mdc file) and click on “Test the connection”.

11. Click on “Finish” to complete the creation of the data source connection to the cube.

12. Select the created data source and click on “Next” to complete the import process and then click on “Finish”.

13. The “Create Package” window will be displayed. Enter the name for the package and click on “Finish”.

14. Now, you will get the “Publish Wizard”; specify the publish location. Click “Next” and then click on “Publish”.

Your cube is now published in the portal. Do note that you cannot make any changes to the metadata while publishing the cube.

Cognos PowerPlay Transformer - Online Exam

Take a practice test at the link below to check your knowledge on Cognos PowerPlay Transformer:

http://www.wiziq.com/online-tests/25991-test-cognos-transformer

 

Cognos PowerPlay Transformer

Cognos PowerPlay Transformer is a tool to create multidimensional database, Powercube. A PowerCube contains calculated, summarized data organized into dimensions and measures and can be viewed and analysed in the PowerPlay Web Explorer, PowerPlay client for Windows, PowerPlay for Excel or Cognos 8 BI. PowerCubes provide secure and fast data access.

The default Cognos PowerPlay transformer window is composed of the following windows:

1. Data Sources - a list of all connected data sources. Each source can be expanded and it lists all available columns. Users can browse the source data by using Data Source Viewer. Columns from a data source window can be dragged & dropped to the dimensions and measures windows accordingly.

2. Dimension Map - manages the dimensions and levels hierarchy in the data model. It allows creating new dimensions and modifying existing using an user-friendly graphical interface. Dimensions and underlaying Levels are created by moving columns from the Data Sources window to the corresponding dimension column.

3. Measures - drag & drop columns to manage number figures (facts) in a PowerPlay model.

4. PowerCubes - you can specify here a list of cubes created by the model.

5. User Classes - define the security.

6. Signons - datasource connection information.

Building a PowerPlay model involves designating columns in the source files as measures and dimensions.

Some of the problems faced during cube creations are:

Insufficient Memory

Increase the paging file size. However this requires re-start of the computer. So, before you build a cube on your local PC, make sure you have sufficient virtual memory (500-1000 MB).

The file system is full

Owing to the amount of data fetched from the database, the temporary space of the database where the data is temporarily stored becomes full. It is not possible for more cube processing to happen on the database and the cube is not created. The solution to this:

1. Check if the sqls fired are correct. Best option is before the iqds are included as data sources into the model, to fire the sqls separately, directly on the database and check if all the joins exist and are correct and if the right result is obtained.
2. Use query-optimization techniques to enhance the performance of the query through modifying the queries themselves or creating appropriate indexes on the tables used by the queries

The SQL explain facility is part of the SQL Compiler that can be used to capture information about the environment where the static or dynamic SQL statement is compiled. The information captured allows you to understand the structure and potential execution performance of SQL statements, including:

·         Sequence of operations to process the query

·         Cost information

·         Predicates and selectivity estimates

·         Statistics for all objects referenced in the SQL statement at the time of the Explain.

3. Ensure that the cube is run during off-peak hours. This is because, if other processes are running on the database, the primary and the secondary log files (into which queries are temporarily processed and stored) may become full and give the above error.
4. If conditions a, b and c are checked and still, the above error is obtained, then procure more temp space. Ask the DBA to either increase the number of secondary log files or increase their size.

Time-Consuming Build of Cube

If the cube has more than 8 measures, then new categories are searched for and created for each measure and then the records added. This is an extremely time consuming process and the cube can take upwards of 2 hours to completed build itself. If there is a database-resource intensive process that needs to run meanwhile, then this is not feasible.

These are the methods we can adopt to reduce the processing overhead

1. Incremental update of the cube - Instead of building the entire cube at a time, we can plan for the cube to ‘build incrementally’. However, this can be done only if there are no major structural changes to the old data i.e. the old hierarchical structure of the dimensions does not change and there are no updates on the measures. If this happens, then the cube has to be re-created again.  In incremental build of the cube, the old data in the cube remains unchanged and only the new records are added into the cube.

In PowerCube windowàPropertiesàProcessingàEnable the radio button ‘This cube is incrementally updated’

2. Use of Proper Optimization – There are 4 types of optimization methods which should be used depending on the way records are stored and updated in the database. The 4 types of settings are
1. Categories
2. Data Passes
3. Direct Create
4. Auto-Partition

The best way to arrive at the appropriate optimization technique is to limit the cube to only few records fetched at a time (excluding most of the categories, putting filters in the iqds). Using this, we can create a test cube in lesser time and then alternate between various optimization techniques to identify the best one.

More investigation should be done about excluding some data sources for measures at a time so that only limited and manageable amount of measures are processed at a time. One the cube is built, then the rest of the data sources are added. If incremental update of the cube is enabled, then the data sources present earlier shouldn’t be ideally processed and hence cube build should be faster.

Test - Cognos 8 BI Administrator

Take a practice test at the link below to check your knowledge on Cognos 8 BI administration, before attempting the cognos certification exam COG-122:

http://www.wiziq.com/online-tests/24969-cognos-8-bi-administrator

Best Practices – Cognos Report Studio

Listing out some best-practices which a developer should follow while developing reports in Cognos Report Studio. For more information, go through Report Studio User Guide.

Formatting:

1. Classes - Define classes for all objects in the report. It would help in maintaining consistency in formatting of all the objects throughout the report page.

2. Consistency – Maintain consistency for the formatting options (Font, Margin, Border, etc.) throughout the report. This will help in improving readability.

3. Report Expressions - Add Report expressions above the crosstab for the selection made in the prompts. This will help the user know the selections made in the report; It would also help in the scenario, where there is no data for the selections.

Filters & Prompts:

1. Ensure that the report contains filters for every dimension required. The rows fetched from the database will be less.

2. Use ‘=’ instead of ‘in’ for single value comparison in filters. This reduces the query run time.

3. Use CASE statement instead of IF…ELSE, for implementing conditional filter. This helps in improving the performance of the filter execution.

4. Delete filters which are not required instead of disabling them. This is required as unused Code hampers the performance of the report.

5. If a prompt is kept required; the corresponding filter in the query should also be kept required. This is done to maintain consistency between filter and prompt.

Calculations:

1. Use in-built calculations instead of calculating manually. This improves performance for the execution of report.

2. Assign proper solve order for the calculated data items. This helps in proper sequence of execution of the calculations.

3. Use explicit brackets for expression definitions. The calculations may give wrong answer if the Brackets are not used in the expressions or calculations of data items.

4. Avoid the usage of tuple function in Calculations unless necessary. The use of tuple function affects the performance as it goes to the detailed level of data, and does it for every record.

Query Items:

1. Remove all unnecessary objects from the report. This improves execution because when the report is executed, the data is fetched for all the data items in the report.

2. Use data items instead of “Calculated members” and “Calculated measures”. The calculations of members should be done in data items. It helps to reduce the run time of calculations.

3. Special Characters should be avoided in the Query names. This can result in the user being unable to generate the SQL/MDX query.

4. For the query items which are not involved in any type of calculations, set the Aggregate Function and Roll Up Aggregate to NONE. This improves execution of report.

Charts:

1. Show Tool Tip for the report items displayed on the chart. This helps the user to easily understand the chart values.

2. Define single Palette for all the charts in the report. This helps to maintain consistency for all the charts used.  3. When using grouping between the data items in the Series; if you want to hide the 2^nd data item, keep the source type for that data item to text and don’t put any text.

General:

1. Use brackets in ‘IF…ELSE’, ‘CASE.’ and other expression. Not using Brackets in the control structures or expressions may result in Parsing error and readability of the expression reduces.

2. Minimum use of Java Script. Usage of Java script might affect the performance of the report.

3. Use Render variable instead of Style variable to show or hide any report items. Style variable executes the item on the report page and then hides it but the render variable does not execute the item which is not to be displayed in the report page.

4. Use Boolean variables instead of String variables unless string variables are unavoidable. Boolean variables get executed faster as compared to String variables.

Cognos Test - Report Studio

Have created the below online-test which can be taken by anyone to check their knowledge on Cognos Report Studio before attempting the cognos certification exam COG-112:

http://www.wiziq.com/online-tests/24850-cognos-report-studio-basics