TM1 TI Analytical Modeling - back to the 1990's OOPS - 1

Analytics is now a very highly pursued field across the corporate world as most of the companies are trying to make use of the vast data they have accumulated to make predictive analysis and informed decisions or improve their business processes by understanding process data trail. Working with data is very different ball game especially when it comes to analytical modeling and developing integrated enterprise analytical reporting solutions around diverse organizational functions. The most modern tools like EXCEL, Essbase, TM1, Cognos or Spotfire - all of them offer remarkable capabilities to do various types of data analysis. Like most products, these are commercial solutions and provide tools to develop relations and translations across data segments in their own style.

Working with TM1 is however a different flavor, especially the Turbo Integrator (TI). One of the major issues with this tool despite having powerful capabilities is the fact that TI is not as capable as an object oriented programming language like Java or C++. However, it is expected to deliver OO results on data. Some of the basic capabilities of any programming language like Function() or Array[] are not available. This makes it very complicated to conceptualize enterprise solutions that are expected to be reusable. The situation is quite similar to the 1990's when programming languages were not very powerful and enterprise solutions architecture was not as mature as it is today. But the answer to implementing reusable, scalable, object-oriented enterprise solutions is same as in the 1990's - 'Design Patterns' or simply put, similar solutions to similar problems.

A common pattern that I used in one recent implementation of Enterprise Solution includes aligning / organizing the candidate data set on co-ordinate system where the axes have discrete points and use simple properties of co-ordinate systems on this model. Such an organization allows determining the characteristics of the elements in question and create a modular solution. The nature of the TI process tool itself can be effectively used to create code modules that are similar to functions dependent on arguments. Since these patterns are not specific to a particular industry or company specific data, pattern based enterprise solutions can be developed using TM1 for any industry specific problem. Such a style or architecture is important in the current business environment where  there is a huge demand for such intelligent/analytical reports to beat the market or improve business performance/productivity. It is not easily realized that these tools are extremely costly to implement and manage because of the proximity of the output to senior management and the dynamics of the implementation that are so closely tied to data. Hence, pattern based solutions become important to scale and reproduce output.