Featured Article(s)
Understanding Windows Management Instrumentation
Microsoft has come up with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI); a COM based technology that can be used to retrieve system-related information from a computer system. This is a component of the Windows OS that can be used to retrieve hardware information from a system of any kind. You can use WMI to retrieve both hardware-related and software-related information from your system. Using WMI, one can communicate with the Windows OS, the hardware devices, running processes, COM+ components, etc. There is a lot to the WMI architecture, including performance counters, event notifications, configuration management, and storage, all built for a distributed environment. Note that WMI is included with Windows 2000, Windows XP, or even the Windows ME editions. This article provides you a guideline on what WMI is, the benefits and how we can use this technology from our Microsoft .NET applications.
Need to Get Up To Speed on BI?
BI is a core requirement for many installations and something that many people are struggling with – not only on a "how do I do that" basis, but also on a "how do I get started" basis. If this is you, check out the SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Workshop – they’ll get you started, show you how to analyze, report and integrate your information more completely and fully into the decision making and review processes for your company. Find out more here and get a schedule of classes.
Taxonomies and Corporate Data
Still, I think user tagging is key… but… this is important as well. Check out this great information from Tom:
"About 6 years ago I first became aware of a movement, spearheaded by the American Institute of CPAs, to create an XML taxonomy for all accounting information so that individual transactions could be tagged and then aggregated for reporting and analysis. The SEC and all the major accounting and database software companies, including Microsoft and Oracle, signed on to the development of this language, which is now known as XBRL (extensible business reporting language).
What once was a US initiative has moved to the global marketplace.
XBRL is currently a voluntary EDGAR filing option for SEC reporting companies, but as its incorporation into corporate data stores becomes more pervasive the SEC will require it for electronic filing. The requirement to report using XBRL is more advanced in the EU and in other G8 countries.
There is a ton of information about this language and its uses at http://xbrl.org."
Now, how would you go about providing user-level tagging and have it mean something? I mean, what one person tags it as is different from what another tags it as… or, perhaps, that’s the point. Stand back and think about the systems your users have in place. Put the reports online, make it all electronic. Now that it’s all there, what happens to the usefulness of that data if they can categorize and tag it as they want to — and share that organization with, and merge it with, others.
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