Business Language

I've been toying with a new type of architecture - or more specifically another approach to solving an age old problem of ad-hoc reporting.

The question usually goes something like this:

We need a flexible, ad-hoc reporting solution which will allow us to do what ever we want whenever we want. It has to be dynamic and easy to use, and should give us the complete power to answer any business question. But we also want the ability to create presentable formatted reports and link together any type of data we so chose.

The answers vary from business vendors like SAP Business Objects or Oracle Business Intelligence tools, to smaller vendors, to various products pieced together like SSAS cubes with SSRS reporting. But, in all cases, the solution is always lacking that flexible and dynamic nature. With all tools, there is always a heavy IT presence. Some of the tools attempt to simplify this by creating an abstraction - such as the Business objects universe concept. This is effectively a meta-model around a physical representation. But this is very limiting as it restricts the use-case to a relational structure. Cubes are a very cool technology but also very limiting and the truth of the matter is that the users care about small data sets such as current days data or even a small subset of current days data - and in a number of cases the cube becomes too burdensome.

So the alternative approach was to actually give a new language to the business user directly. Goldman did something like this with their slang language. Imagine a language which is simple enough and descriptive enough for the user's to use and lacks all the very technical details of an actual technical language like Java or C#. We should accept that user's already do a fair amount of programming with the tools at hand such as VBA, and combination of Excel/Access. At times, it is very impressive some of the things these guys produce and at other times it is quite scary.

So, let's say there is a functional language that allows the user to manipulate the various available artifacts - i.e. back-end systems. Some functions retrieve data based on the supplied parameters and other functions can perform actions like calculations or data changes. Before you know it - you've provided a set of very powerful tools and what emerges is that the users start tinkering with the functions to build more dynamic and abstract features that were not previously imagined. What I came to realize is that revolutions are slow things that require tinkering, and at some point, something emerges which could not at all be previously imagined but once created makes perfect sense and is the most natural. The user's need tools to tinker, and that tinkering actually creates tremendous value and innovation. Innovation drives investment and growth, etc...

So, back to the language. The language should of course work within Excel, but should not be restricted to excel. Ideally, we bridge the language with perhaps a more functional cousin like F# and create a natural set of functions with a pure functional language. At the heart of this language is a data set - to borrow from any database driver - a TDS class - a tabular data set. Let's say the language only understands data sets not objects. Everything is a table of data or perhaps, a table of tables. Some functions create tables and some functions manipulate tables. It is also interesting to see how the roles of systems and enterprise architectures change. Systems become components which are forced to expose "functions" which are manipulated from this functional language. This in turn forces systems to become more dynamic loosely coupled modules as it's not always known how an external function may want to manipulate the components of a given system. Looked broader at a higher level, the systems start to make up an overall platform - with the functional language acting as a glue that binds it all.

I think this approach gives the most flexibility - coupled with some of the more traditional options like cubes and canned reporting - perhaps even a vendor product. The approach of course is more technical and requires some learning but it strengthens the bond between user and system and makes a user an investor as they are now in affect developing the system - or platform. It is a wonderful thing to create something that you're proud of that adds value - that feeling can be given to the user to strengthen the bond to the platform and the overall enterprise architecture.

0% unemployment

I'd like to once again deviate from my regular technological themes and instead discuss philosophy or rather some shade of philosophic economics. I was watching CSPAN the other night and a show came on discussing poverty in America. There was a panel of speakers including heavy weights in the topic along with some celebrity personalities sprinkled in. Some of the speakers espoused what is almost close to pure socialism that it was the responsibility, nay a requirement for corporations to hire people that they don't need and, which in turn, will create jobs for the poor people, and will help them get out of poverty. Now what the corporations are doing instead is hording the cash and rewarding their management ranks for driving efficiency - i.e. doing more with less people.

I am in technology and in laymen terms that means that my job is to build systems, which create automation, which in turn, create efficiencies or in other wards reduces headcount. I am even horrified when management hires too many people for one project as it destroys efficiency, makes the process tremendously burdensome and bureaucratic, and this eventually leads to either a failed system or a very poor system. These projects always cost more and deliver much less.

So - how do you achieve 100% employment - or more specifically, some higher number like 95% as in every society there will be some group of people which either cannot or won't work. In America, the official unemployment rate is just under 10%, but there is probably another 5% or more of unemployed which do not collect unemployment benefits. This means America has 85% employment - looked from this angle, that's not bad at all. But, it would be important to understand the distribution of the income across the 85%. Is the income completely skewed - i.e is it a nice bell curve or a steep hill with a cliff drop off.

If the bell curve is nice and even that would mean that we have a strong middle class and no fear of a revolution. On the other hand, if the curve is more of a cliff, then there will be tremors produced from the mountain, which could erupt and bring down everything around it. The problem is that individuals are rational, but people are not. Our political process is also looking more and more weak with the least worthy striving for notice. Politics and education should be the epitome of the most intellectual of us all - rather finance is where we spend our energies.

I am confusing various topics - but they are all related. Our wealth and the most brilliant talent seems to be focusing either on financial engineering or entertainment be it social type websites or some form of media.

It is very easy to get into a negative feedback loop and it is not easy to get out of it as the decisions and choices are counter intuitive and not at all obvious.

One should always better oneself - and perhaps the forces of good and right will prevail over the forces of ignorant.

This is not the most fluid of posts as I don't yet fully understand how all the pieces fit together.