Building Reliable Data Solutions
Warning: This post is outdated. It is here for reference purposes only.
Spreadsheet Hell. It's a place many people find themselves in and it's a difficult hole to dig yourself out of, because your spreadsheet is King of Spreadsheets and can do no wrong. Or, it does wrong frequently but you just can't seem to start the required Anarchy because Joe Executive might ask you a question only the King can answer. This post is quick summary about how I overthrow the King, one spreadsheet at a time and the tools I use to accomplish this feat. Reliable data solutions are a must for any business in this age.
Love Your Career as a Nerd
So far for 2014, I'm not doing very well on my target of one post per week. Why's that, you might ask? I think the best explanation is that I love my job and career. Since coming back from our extended holiday break I have barely had time to catch my breath, and I love it! I love being a nerd!
Why I Don't Like Infographics
For almost 6 years, one of my primary roles at work has been data visualization. I like data visualization for a lot of reasons, but the primary reason is because if done right, the end user will actually look at the data, think about the data, and use the data. One form of data visualization that I have tried to not hate is the ever-more common "Infographic." To be fair, I have seen good infographics but they are few and far between. So rare in fact, that I can't even find one that I liked again. Bummer.
2013 - Year In Review
Well, it's almost the end of the year and I want to recap some of what I have done and learned. Since I didn't have a blog at this time last year, I can't say that I did or didn't do what I said I was or wasn't going to do. So, I'll just go over a few highlights that come to mind quickly.
Using SYSTEM_USER to Filter Data
In this post I want to show a cool trick I discovered recently that has made my life much easier. I build a lot of database systems with SQL server holding the data and a variety of technologies used for the front-end interface, mainly MS Access (unfortunately!). Sometimes I have a need to filter the data based on who is viewing it, and using SYSTEM_USER has made this much easier with just a little bit of prep work. The system I'm building right now will be used to distribute surveys to our call centers so their employees can call the appropriate people with this survey.
Before getting into the details, let's see what SYSTEM_USER actually does:
The above screenshot shows the domain (one of my development VMs) followed by a slash ( \ ) and the username I log in with. Because we use Windows Authentication with Active Directory, I assume this is fairly hard to bypass but I do not know that for certain. Regardless, it's much more secure than putting the similar code inside VBA in Access where anyone with a clue can fiddle with it. Alright... now to the real work...
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