Sky on Tech

IBM Information Center topic in the Red Brick Warehouse 6.3 documentation describing Star schemas including performance, terminology, and a few examples.

Wikipedia entry for the common data warehouse Star schema design.

Part 1 and Part 2 are introductions to the design of a standard Data Mart including data and transactional model, star schema, dimensions, and so on.

Data integration is the process of moving and combining data across the information system. It typically consists of extracting data from different sources (databases, files, applications, Web Services, emails, etc.), applying transformations (join, lookup, deduplication, calculation, etc.) to this data and sending the resulting data to target systems.

Someone was wondering if there was a way to import data and structure from an old MS Access application into DB2. The best answer I could provide was a link to http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/alazzawe/0112alazzawe2.html

A 9:46 video that describes some of the new features in the Web User Interface of Rational Team Concert 2.0.

A collaborative software development environment
Rational Team Concert enables developers to collaborate together using integrated Planning (with full support for Scrum), Source Control, Work Items, Build, Dashboards, Reports, and Process Support.

When Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message" he meant, among other things, that every new medium spawns its own unexpected units of communication. In addition to the Web-page, the blog and the tweet, we are witnessing the rise of riveting online talks, long enough to inform and explain, short enough for mass impact. The Web has allowed us to rediscover [this] fire.

Radiolab dedicates an hour to an exploration of numbers.. Where do they come from and what do they really do for us? We bring you stories on how they confuse us, connect us, and reveal secrets about us. "Innate Numbers" delves into the ways we have taught ourselves to look at numbers, as opposed to how babies, and some civilizations still naturally see numbers in a logarithmic sense. "From Benford to Erdos" deals with physicist Frank Benford discovery, Benford's Law as it is now known, revealing a cosmic preference for certain numbers. "Calculove" details the long term relationship, focused around math problems, between a teacher and student.

To get this podcast started, Robert ambushes Jad with a question … a question we’ve all been dying to ask him since June 10th, 2009, when Amil Abumrad came into the world. But fear not, we didn’t do a whole podcast just to give the new dad a hard time. Robert talks to Josh Greene, the Harvard professor we had on our Morality show. They revisit some ideas from that show in the context of the big, complicated problems of today (think global warming and nuclear war). Josh argues that to deal with those problems, we’re going to have to learn how to make better use of that tiny part of our brain that handles abstract thinking. Not a simple proposition, but, despite the odds, Josh has hope. For more details on Josh Greene see http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/

Can we know people by the words they put on a page? Understanding a person’s ideas takes time and study. But you literally can get a pictorial implication of some text by pasting it into Wordle, a text-cloud toy that is the brainchild of IBM senior software engineer Jonathan Feinberg. In this episode of Computer Science Spotlight, Jonathan talks about his inspiration for creating Wordle and his approach toward visualization problems. See also http://www.mrfeinberg.comand http://wordle.net/

With the fall of the Tower of Babel, as the tale goes, people lost the power to understand each other. IBM and its research collaborators are working on a project called Global Autonomous Language Exploitation, or GALE, that will rectify translation issues for military and civilian clients who need to understand TV programs broadcast in Arabic and Mandarin. In this episode of Computer Science Spotlight, IBM computer scientist Stephen Chu talks about his role in the speech recognition aspect of the program.

In this episode of Computer Science Spotlight, IBM computer scientist Charu Aggarwal talks about some of the fundamental issues in mining streamed data -- and alludes to two books he has worked on in recent years: Data Streams: Models and Algorithms and Privacy-Preserving Data Mining: Models and Algorithms. IMG:http://bks9.books.google.ca/books?id=fUpw_IvAe84C&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=5&sig=ACfU3U13VpeE6xvuPgEU4_GpoufcOpE7aA

When Marshall McLuhan said "the medium is the message" he meant, among other things, that every new medium spawns its own unexpected units of communication. In addition to the Web-page, the blog and the tweet, we are witnessing the rise of riveting online talks, long enough to inform and explain, short enough for mass impact. The Web has allowed us to rediscover [this] fire.

Naming science as his chief inspiration, Mathieu Lehanneur shows a selection of his ingenious designs -- an interactive noise-neutralizing ball, an antibiotic course in one layered pill, asthma treatment that reminds kids to take it, a living air filter, a living-room fish farm and more. See his personal web page at http://www.mathieulehanneur.com

Can the interests of an individual nation be reconciled with humanity's greater good? Can a patriotic, nationally elected politician really give people in other countries equal consideration? Following his TEDTalk calling for a global ethic, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown fields questions from TED Curator Chris Anderson.

India is fast becoming a superpower, says Shashi Tharoor -- not just through trade and politics, but through "soft" power, its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology, Bollywood. He argues that in the long run it's not the size of the army that matters as much as a country's ability to influence the world's hearts and minds.

Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself.

Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West -- and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.

William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

For five years, young Emmanuel Jal fought as a child soldier in the Sudan. Rescued by an aid worker, he's become an international hip-hop star and an activist for kids in war zones. In words and lyrics, he tells the story of his amazing life. See also http://gua-africa.org/