KPI, metric, measure: Huh?

KPI, metric, measure: Huh?

I recently read an interesting discussion on LinkedIn asking "What is the difference between KPI, metric, and measure?"  When I was first notified about the discussion, I thought "That's easy to answer."

Then I started reading all the answers; some thoughtful, some insightful, some trite, some silly, ... you get the idea.  But it did point out that terms we in the IT world use frequently may not be universally defined.

So, here are my definitions, take 'em or leave 'em.

KPI

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is the use of a metric that the business has defined to provide management with a quick analysis of how the business is doing in the area being measured that is considered critical.

Notice how I used metric and measure in that definition?

Metric

A Metric is a relationship of a measure to something that will indicate some degree of good or bad, success or failure, improvement or degradation such as time, distance, repetitions, events, etc..  For example, miles per hour, gallons per minute, kilowatts per hour; each of these can be given some rating or ranking in a hierarchy.

100 miles per hour might be an "Unsafely Fast" metric on a two-lane road, but be "Very Slow" on a NASCAR race track.

Notice how metrics are made up from measures?

Measure

A measure is fixed indicator of something that can be quantified such as count, size, quantity, dimension.  Examples are 2 apples, 15 inches, 8 ounces, 10 acres.

Notice that measures are at the bottom of this hierarchy.  Measures are used to define metrics which are used to define Performance Indicators which may become Key Performance Indicators.

Notice that I snuck in a level between metric and KPI?  There can be many performance indicators, but there should be few Key Performace Indicators.

PowerDesigner: How to determine "create" and "modify" timestamps in XDB files

Have you ever wondered who made a change to a PowerDesigner XDB file and when the change was made?  Here's how to figure that out.

Open an XDB file in a text editor.  Search for CreationDate or ModificationDate.  Following these XML tags you will find Creator or Modifier tags; these will give the logon id (OS user) of the person who created or modified the attribute.

To get the date of creation or modification, create an Excel spreadsheet similar to the one shown below.  In the "Seconds" column, insert the number found in the XDB file such as:

<a:ModificationDate>1348840976</a:ModificationDate> (Column A4.)

Divide this number by 86,400, the number of seconds in a day ("Days", B column).

• B column formula: =A4/86400

PowerDesigner counts the number of seconds from Midnight on January 1, 1970 UTC.  In Excel, add the number of fractional days to this date to get the calculated date in the UTC time zone.

To calculate the local time, add or subtract your time zone offset.  For me in the U.S. Central time zone, during daylight savings time, I need to subtract 5 hours, or 5/24 of a day.  The formula I use is below.

• D column formula: =(C4+B4)-(5/24)

Of course, the formulas above would have their rows changed in each row, but you should get the idea.  You would also have to use a "custom" cell format to get the dates to display as shown below.  I use "m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss" as a custom format for dates in columns C and D.

	A	B	C	D
1	Seconds	Days	Starting Date UTC	CDT
2	1325765647	15344.5098	1/1/1970 0:00:00	1/5/2012 7:14:07
3	1330036842	15393.9449	1/1/1970 0:00:00	2/23/2012 17:40:42
4	1348840976	15611.5854	1/1/1970 0:00:00	9/28/2012 9:02:56
5	1348842034	15611.5976	1/1/1970 0:00:00	9/28/2012 9:20:34

Hope you find this useful.

PowerDesigner:: How to reroute links

Have you tried to manually reroute a link in PowerDesigner (PD) and been frustrated that, no matter what you try, you can't get the link to go the route you want it to go?

After much irritation at not being able to find a way to do this in the help documents, I emailed pubs@sybase.com to see if they could tell me where to find help topics on this.  They responded by giving me not only the help pages to review, but giving me step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

My problem involved routing lines around other tables.  If the most direct route was through another table and I couldn't move any of the tables involved, I wanted to go from top-to-top, bottom-to-bottom, or side-to-side around the blocking table.

It turns out that I needed to add "elbow joints" to the line and then drag the line between the two new elbow joints.  How far to drag this section was not apparent, but it appears that one must drag the line far away from the actual route desired so PD will actually create the two new right angle turns in the line.  If you don't go far enough, PD will either return to where you started or create a new route not what you want.

Once you drag the line far enough away to actually get the route to do what you want, you can drag the center portion (between the two new elbows) to where you really want the line to go.

The help page to look at is:
Core Features Guide > Modeling with PowerDesigner > Diagrams, Matrices, and Symbols > Symbols > Manipulating Link Symbols

To add additional "elbow" points, ctrl-click on the link where you want to add the new elbows.  By the way, these are temporary elbows and if you don't get the results you wanted after dragging the link, you will have to recreate them.

Once you have added two new elbow points, left-click on the space between the two elbows and drag it to where you want the route to go (a little farther is better).  Once you get the link to have the route you want, you can move it desired position by dragging between the two new right angles.

PowerDesigner 16.1 Repair

After installing an EBF, do you quite often find PowerDesigner does not work properly?  A very common occurrence I have is the receipt of the following message (multiple times, I might add):

After Googling this error and trying some of the suggested fixes, I finally called PD support and this is what worked:

1. Close PD.
2. Start - Control Panel
3. Programs and Features
4. Right-click Sybase PowerDesigner ...
5. Click "Change"
6. Click "Repair"
7. Click "Next"
8. Click "Finish"
9. Open PD - hopefully it works.
10. If not fixed, uninstall PD, reinstall base PD and last EBF (they are cumulative.)

PowerDesigner 16.0 CDM entity properties displays TRUE instead of actual value

Product: PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5

OS: Windows 7 Professional

 In CDM entity property window, clicking in property column displays TRUE instead of the actual text in the cell.

Closing and reopening the entity property window temporarily fixes it, but TRUE will be displayed eventually.  If press TAB to step through all columns, when it wraps to next row, problem is temporarily fixed.

Bug reported: Case 11738269 created successfully.

PowerDesigner: Report "No paragraph numbering" option does not work.

Product: PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5

OS: Windows 7 Professional

Create a report.
Open the report's properties.
Check the "No paragraph numbering" option; click OK.

From the report editor "Report items" pane, right click the top level item in hierarchy.
Select "Quick view"; no paragraphs are numbered.

Select Report from the menu; select "Generate Report"
Paragraphs are still numbered.

PowerDesigner Bug Report Case:
Case Id: 11735031 - Report "No paragraph numbering" option does not work.

PowerDesigner 16.0: Model Options settings not applied when opening model

Product: PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5
OS: Windows 7 Professional

The settings for a PDM configured in Model Options are not applied when opening the model.  In order to get them applied, I have to open Model Options after the PDM is opened and, without changing any settings, click OK.  The settings are then applied.  This is consistent with some models and does not happen with others.

The one it is consistent with is an Oracle Version 11g database model.

Bug Report created 5/1/2012
Case 11734125

Comparitive EDW Architecture Seminar by Bill Inmon

I attended a "Comparitive EDW Architecture" seminar put on by Bill Inmon in Golden, CO, on 4/4/2012 to 4/6/2012.  The purpose of the seminar was to explain the different DW philosophies of Inmon and Kimabll and how they can not only be used together, but complement each other.

Sadly, no one from the "official" Kimball organization accepted Bill's invite to present at the conference.  Scott Hirst, Ultra Solutions, Inc., did attend and presented the Kimball DW architecture philosophy very well.  Thanks, Scott.

The seminar presented Inmon's latest DW 2.0 architecture philosophy and Kimball's latest Dimensional architecture.  Also discussed was how the two of them can complement each other.

The DW 2.0 architecture was compared to a city's architecture and Kimball's Dimensional model was compared to a house's architecture.  The DW 2.0 architecture (in at least 3NF normal form) provided the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) foundation upon which the Dimensional  architecture is used to build the data marts needed for OLAP and reporting.

Of course, the best part of any seminar like this is the chance to network with others and learn from shared experiences.

Power Designer 16: Multi-line text in Description and Annotation columns not always displayed

 Product: PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5
OS: Windows 7 Professional

In PDM, select Model => Tables
Show Name, Comment, Description, Annotation columns
Sort by Description
Click ... for any apparently blank column that appears between rows with displayed text in column.
Text for column will appear.
Close editing window.
Text will appear in column displayed in grid.

Bug report made: Case 11732189

Power Designer 16 Stereotype change custom symbol bug

PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect
Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5
OS: Windows 7 Professional

I have created stereotypes in the Oracle 11g DBMS xdb file for table and reference.  The stereotype, "Deprecated", changes the fill color, gradient, and line style for the stereotype's custom object.

The stereotype is applied to several tables and references.

Now I need to change the custom symbol properties for the stereotypes.  I expect the changes to be applied to tables and references that have been assigned the "Deprecated" stereotype.  Instead, these objects get reformatted back to the default settings!  I need to open each object and reassign the stereotype to get the formatting applied.

Sybase, Inc. - Case-Express bug report attempted, but their web site generates Java error message.

PowerDesigner 16 PDM Display Preferences - Table - Columns

PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect
Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5
OS: Windows 7 Professional 

Issue:  Changing of Table display preferences for selected items only does not work after first use.

Steps:

1. Open PDM and diagram.
2. Select one table
3. Select Tools=>Display Preference
4. Select Table in "Display Preferences" Category
5. Change Columns setting.  Say Columns was not checked by default, but for specific table(s) you want to display all the columns.
6. Click OK
7. "Changing Formats" dialog should have "Selected symbols" already selected.
8. Click OK
9. Select another table in diagram
10. Select Tools=>Display Preferences
11. Select Table in "Display Preferences" Category
12. Settings in "Table" section should be same
13. Click OK
14. No "Changing Formats" dialog window is displayed and tables are not changed.

Work Around: 

1. Change the Table settings to anything else, apply them, and then change the Table settings back to what you want.
2. Right click table with desired display settings, select "Get Format".
   Right click target table and select "Apply Format"
   CAUTION: The entire set of format and display options will be applied to target table, so if fill color, shadow, line style, etc. are different in target table, they will be changed, too.

Sybase Inc. - Case-Express bug opened:
Case Id: 11727786 - PDM Display Preferences - Table - Columns not reusable

PowerDesigner 16 PDM Model Options not enforced and randomly ignored

PowerDesigner Enterprise Architect
Version 16.0.0.3576 EBF5
OS: Windows 7 Professional 

PDM Model Settings are set as shown below:


When diagrams were created, reference symbols were as displayed below:



Randomly, PowerDesigner chooses to ignore these settings and changes ALL reference symbols in ALL diagrams to the "Relational" Notation:



When this happens, I have to open each diagram, right click in the diagram white space, select Model Options, change the Notation style to anything else, click OK, open the Model Options again and change the Notation style back to Conceptual.

PowerDesigner does not let me change the reference symbol format using Display Preferences when this happens.  All the options are grayed out and set to "Notation".

Sybase Inc. - Case Express bug opened:
Case Id: 11727628 - PowerDesigner randomly ignores Model Options reference setting