I thought my Saturday was going to be one of my normal lazy non-working Saturdays doing housework and catching up with things I did not do during the week. So, I woke up late, did my normal routine of booting up my Dell Workstation which we call Beedee and while it boots make my coffee. But, of course things didn't work that way.

Beedee running Windows XP SP2 (with all the latest updates) won't boot up (Safe Mode, Last Known Working Configuration, etc) and would just go into this restart mode. It is going into the restart mode because I have not changed XP's default setting of recovery settings when it encounters the Blue Screen of Death. So, I booted from the original Windows XP CD and pressed F8 to disable the automatic restart. Finally I see the blue screen of death with the error:

*** STOP 0x0000007E(0XC0000005,0XF8560A05,0XF89D54C8,0XF89D51C4)
*** PCI.SYS - addressF8560A05 base at F8556000, Datestamp 41107d31

Using Joseph’s Vate, I searched the Microsoft Website and found this:
You Receive a Stop Error 0x7E in Pci.sys

The article was not useful to me since under resolution it has: “To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Windows XP.” I have the latest service pack and all the updates. I searched the web for other solutions but I did not really find anything.

Joseph helped me and we thought that maybe my pci.sys is corrupted and I can just copy it from the original CD. We thought if that did not work, I’ll just reinstall XP SP2 since I have all my backups. So, with this plan, we disconnected all my connected peripherals (e.g. USB hub, etc..) and then Booted from the installation CD. We then followed Method 1 of the article:
"Pci.sys Is Missing or Corrupt" Error Message When You Start Windows which tells you how to Restore the File using the Windows Recovery Console.

After that was done, we restarted in Safe Mode and this time, there was no more Blue Screen of Death. From there, it gave me the option to recover from different Restore Points. I chose a restore point. The restore worked and I am happy that Beedee is back up and running.

I changed XP's default setting of recovery settings so it won’t restart every time there is a system failure. This is what I did:
1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Click Settings for Startup and Recovery
4. This will bring you to Startup and Recovery. Under System Failure, uncheck “Automatically restart”

Anyway, this concludes my long blog. For those of you who may one day encounter (hopefully not) the same error, I hope this post may prove helpful.

Whether one is a project manager for an Open Source Business Intelligence Project or any project for that matter, managing and monitoring project schedules are very important. One must continuously monitor schedule to actual work performed to ensure that the project stays on target. Delays in the project schedule affect all the aspects of the project.

In our project engagements one (with respect to Time Management) of the project performance reports we do is Float Analysis.

Click to view original size

The concept of float is integral to Critical Path. Float or sometimes referred to as “Slack” can be thought of as the maximum time an activity can slip without delaying the end date of project. As a quick way of looking at a float for a network diagram, if an activity is on the critical path, it has a zero float. (I have read some technical cases where this is not always true but it is still a quick way to look at it ) Simply, the activity with zero float has no time buffer or allowance for work slippage, i.e., if the activity is not finished on time, it will cause the project to fall behind schedule.

If we look at the example of the previous blog post, Critical Path in Schedule Management, the sample durations are:

Click to view original size

If you look at this simple example, all the activities are in the critical path since the critical paths are:
Start-A-B-E-F-C-End and Start-D-B-E-F-C-End.

Remember though that when managing the schedule and critical activities of your project, the other aspects of the project - Scope, Cost, Quality, Resource Management, Communication, Risk, and Procurement Management should not be neglected or have less emphasis.

According to the August 2005 TDWI Report Series,

Enterprise BI Licenses Costs up to $700,000 for 1000 users, not including Training or Premium Support Services.

Cost has been a motivator to moving to Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI). But, why are large enterprises not fast enough in Open Source BI adoption?

I believe some of the challenges to moving to OSBI by large enterprises with existing BI implementation include but not limited to:

• Investment: Large enterprises have spent millions of dollars in their current BI infrastructure as well as staff training. Would they easily throw that away?
• Resistance to Change: It is human nature to resist change. As human beings, we fear what we don’t know. There is the politics involved in moving to an OSBI solution. I have seen users and administrators become attached to how they do things and using a particular tool is part of “how we do things”.
• Changes to Operational Procedures: For BI administrators, changing tools and infrastructure means a disruption to the current and working set of operational procedures.
• View of Career Threat: I’ve seen push backs when people think their careers will be in jeopardy because they are not knowledgeable in it. In the tough job market, people get worried that their job will go away because a new software or tool is going to be deployed.

I am sure there are other challenges out there. OSBI tools have a lot to offer. For instance, OSBI tools can be used to prototype new implementation. Developing a prototype is a good way to confirm that the design and technologies used will meet the enterprise BI needs. The OSBI prototype can be extended to see data validity or to assess data cleansing needs.

There are many possibilities but many challenges as well. Each challenge has a solution. For instance, when it is viewed as a career threat, it can be repositioned to appeal to one’s love of learning and playing with new “toys”. In adopting new technologies, cost, technologies, people and culture matter. Positioning OSBI as providing value with respect to cost, technologies, people and culture will go a long way.

Our TeleInterActive Networks hosting service, including these blogs and our customer sites, will be down from midnight tonight, until, hopefully, 4 a.m. Pacific time. The server in the midwest is being moved to a new facillity.

Thank you for your understanding.