BOARD 11 Randomizer Tool

Paul Wyatt

WHAT WAS THE RANDOMIZER TOOL.   

To those that knew of it, and before BOARD 11, the Randomizer Tool was hugely powerful, allowing test models of production offerings to be created in as little as five minutes (once you knew the fields and cubes to obfuscate).  Simply put, it turns real data into random data.  Image 1 shows the app launched on the host server. 

 

To those that have never heard of the Randomizer tool, 'it turns real data into random data'

 

The greatest strength of the tool was its configurability.  The developer can anonymise entity codes and descriptions. Numeric cube values can be scrambled in various ways whilst text cubes can be anonymised or cleared.  This means that, for example, by randomising entity descriptions and leaving the codes in place, one leaves all functionality of the model intact. By copying, to a text file, the entity and cube settings, one can save a configuration for later, immediate, use.

 

With judicial use of the ENTITY DISPLAY settings within a capsule, it is very easy to design a capsule, optimised for randomising, with the absolute minimum of re-configuration before delivering an impromptu demo containing a genuinely random dataset.

 

Image 1: Randomizer Tool configured to randomise all Entity descriptions only and dividing all cube values by 3 or clearing them as required.

 

I would like to call upon all within the community that recognise this amazinig tool for what it was to vote on the idea of BOARD providing a tool to achieve the same on the BOARD 11 platform as a priority.

 

Background.   

We do not maintain demo models due to the size of my team and having to minimise our liabilities; maintaining a demo model of the various services we offer is also very time consuming and costly and does not allow us to demonstrate the latest features on offer within our LIVE environment. 

 

Instead, we have made use of the BOARD randomizer tool to create on-the-fly internal demo models within 15mins of requirement.  This ability has directly contributed to our success with pitches and demos as well as for the BI Team as potential clients get to see exactly what they can expect to receive in a very short time.

 

With the advent of BOARD 11, various tools have either been incorporated into the release, such as metadata and transporter, or they have been made redundant, as is the case with the randomizer tool (and MXC Cubes...it's ok, I'm over this one('ish)) and (as observed by Etienne CAUSSE), whilst not strictly a tool, the amazingly useful admin model which was the Log Analyser, which was raised here Log Management Application : any update ? - I really really want that tol back in a BOARD 11 update.

 

Image 2: The log analyzer model - built by BOARD and freely released to analyse all of the logs.  It was great but needs updating to analyse the new logs and now also requires re-building to work with BOARD 11.

 

 

Thank you all for your consideration of this idea.

 

Regards,

 

Paul Wyatt

Monisha Jain

Thank you, Paul for sharing your idea. We appreciate the time and effort you put into crafting your suggestion.

We are committed to delivering the best possible experience to our customers, and we must prioritize the features and enhancements that will have the most significant impact on their daily use of our software. 

While we won't be moving forward with your suggestion, we want you to know that we value your input and appreciate your contribution to our community.