About Author

Allen Smith

At the age of 13, Allen Smith began teaching ‘grown-ups’ how to use their Commodore 64′s and TRS-80 computers. For an extra dollar he would even fix their Rubik’s cube. Allen has worked with computers ever since.

Allen created this blog because everyone who works with Cognos or Microsoft SQL has tips and tricks to share.  Admins and developers always run into problems and find workarounds. This is a place to share those ideas.

For more information, follow Allen at LinkedIn and Twitter.

Recent Business Intelligence Projects:

• Petroleum Pump Manufacturer – Global general ledger consolidation and supply chain visibility project with Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence.
• Oilfield Pipe, Valve and Fittings Company – IBM Cognos mentoring and tuning.
• Oil and Gas Production Company – Report conversion project from Business Objects to IBM Cognos.
• Medical Industry – Eight years experience with imaging centers, physician practices and surgical hospitals.  Projects included data warehouse and reporting projects with IDX, NextGen, GE Centricity and other data sources.

Technical Certification

Allen is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist with certification in Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance. His other IT specialties include database administration, business intelligence, secure networking and medical imaging services.

Background

Allen received an MBA from University of Central Oklahoma with emphasis in Computer Sciences and a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University. Allen and his wife Denise live in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Allen has worked in database services, Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) since 1998. Data Warehousing services help client companies bring their data together from multiple sources or systems. For example, a recent oil & gas customer needed to bring together general ledgers from 17 global regions for a unified view of their finances.

Business Intelligence systems assist in analyzing, presenting and reporting a company’s data in meaningful, usable forms. Allen has designed and developed business solutions with the IBM Cognos and Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence platforms since 1999.

Recent Business Intelligence projects have included physician practices, surgery centers, property and casualty insurance and several projects in the petroleum industry.

About the Name

As for the name ‘Cognitive Information’, it came from Cognitive Information Processing Theory which tries to explain how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information. These are the same challenges that most businesses face with data: storage, retrieval and processing it for humans.

This site is not affiliated with IBM or Microsoft.
‘Cognos’, the ‘Great Outdoors’ samples and ‘IBM’ are trademarks of IBM Inc.
‘Microsoft’, ‘SQL Server’, AdventureWorks are trademarks of Microsoft, Inc.