Kia Carnival
Good for: Great road trips - The 2.9L turbodiesel sipped gas while providing enough power to haul people up and down New Zealand terrain. Rain-sensing wipers, climate control, backup sensors, and powered sliding doors and hatch were perfect for the ever-changing weather and lets you focus on more important things - like navigating roundabouts and driving on the other side of the road. The 7 standard seats easily tumbled and stowed for any situation.
Compromises: This van's center console was designed asymmetrically to maximize driver space. When the steering wheel got flipped to the right side the driver now gets the smaller space. The compass always points North - I bet they didn't update the computer for the southern hemisphere because it also shows MPG readouts which is meaningless to most people in New Zealand.
Overall reaction - Two thumbs up: In this configuration, this minivan would blow away everything else available in the United States. All the modern minivan features are here, and the turbo made the diesel powerplant almost fun. Yes you can hear the whine and BOV if you drove next to a wall. The Carnival also has very car-like handling, and driving it around the winding roads of New Zealand was actually kind of fun.
I suppose this format could apply to laptops as well:
Lenovo Thinkpad T410
Good for: Daily computing - Progress has been made and the T-series is now flawless. The Esc button has finally been moved and made large - the old T400 placement made it easy to accidentally bring up Help.
Compromises: None
Overall reaction - Two thumbs Up : It's light, durable, powerful, and manages power well. USB ports on both sides of the machine also has an iPhone/Blackberry charging mode. What more can you ask for?
Lenovo Thinkpad Edge 14
Good for: Personal computing - This Thinkpad is for when you're tired of work, and want to kick back and enjoy the weekend. The MacBook-styled illuminated keyboard and enormous touchpad makes computing comfortable after spending all week on your work computer. Enjoy a movie on the native 16:9 1366x768 screen, or plug it in to the TV via HDMI.
Compromises: Leave that Excel spreadsheet at work, this computer's F-keys can only be accessed by hitting Fn. On personal time, Fn has been reversed and the F-keys serve as multimedia controls.
Overall reaction - Thumb up: If you work on Thinkpads all day at work, this is a great complementary laptop for personal use. It has enough Thinkpad familiarity to be comfortable (trackpoint, Fn key placement, even the same power adapter and battery as the T-series) but some enjoyable changes for more entertainment-oriented computing.
Thursday, 21st of October, 2010
Tuesday, 19th of October, 2010
The short answer is that many BW features are not available at the InfoCube level - almost every Business Objects/BW integration presentation has this chart so here it is again:
| BI metadata feature | InfoCube | BEx Query |
| Characteristics (inc. Time and Unit) | X | X |
| Hierarchies | X | X |
| Basic Key Figures | X | X |
| Navigational Attributes | X | |
| Display Attributes | X | X |
| Calculated Key Figures / Formulas | X | |
| Restricted Key Figures | X | |
| Custom Structures | X | |
| Variables | X |
Notice there is some really important functionality here missing in the InfoCube level - such as calculated key figures and variables/prompts. The limited functionality of an OLAP universe cannot replace the powerful BEx query layer.