The “technical” stuff

We might as well get this out of the way…

In the next few posts (and the couple that I’ve already posted) I’ll be talking a lot about what Real Sports Analytics can do for the world of professional sports.  Let me take just a few moments to talk about the technology behind my product.

All non-technical folks are excused from this discussion, although I certainly welcome comments if you have any questions on exactly how this works.

First of all, you’ve got to understand the fundamentals of multi-dimensional databases.  MDDBs have been around since the early 1990s, I actually started my work with them in 1994 when I performed a functional analysis between Keenan’s Acumate product and (then) Arbor Software’s Essbase.  My point here is this is not a “flash in the pan” technology, they’ve been around a while.

Check out this excerpt from Information Age magazine from a few year’s ago.  The base technology behind Real Sports Analytics is Essbase – it’s in very good company here….

 

Yep, you read that correctly – Essbase is right up there in influential innovations with the Blackberry, Google, and high speed internet.

So Essbase is the data storage mechanism for Real Sports Analytics.  It is powerful, flexible and can pull in data from just about anywhere.  Essbase was originally developed by Arbor Software (I was one of the first 100 there).  Arbor “merged” with Hyperion in 1998 who was then purchased by Oracle.  So technically, the product name for Essbase is “Oracle Essbase” now.  (Which to this day I still have problems saying.)

Essbase is much more capable than other database for the “analytics” part of Real Sports Analytics.  I can pull in player performance data on an instance-by-instance and then enable players, coaches, agents, anyone for that matter, to view real time performance data by player, by position, by groups of players (offense, defense, special teams), by season, by individual games, by quarters, by plays, ….    Well, you get the picture.

If your player grading system is scored 1-5, 1-10, 1-100 or –100 to +100, it doesn’t matter.  Essbase can handle it, can store it, can calculate complex statistical models from it and delivery it to you quickly and easily.

I’ve built Essbase cubes that have contained hundreds of billions (and beyond) intersections of data.  Simply put, Essbase can use as input any and all data you’ve ever gathered on your players or any player in your particular sport.  If the data is in a spreadsheet, great Essbase can read it.  If data is in an existing relational database (Oracle, SQL Server, DB/2, etc), no problem Essbase can grab it.  Bar napkin, fax, crazy drawing on a whiteboard, a little more complicated, but yes, Real Sports Analytics can use it.

So Essbase is different, it is the industry leading most powerful MDDB on the market right now (sorry, Microsoft MSAS was always a bridesmaid in this race).

From a user perspective, how do you get this data?  I’ve chose AppliedOLAP’s Dodeca product for Real Sports Analytics.  Why?  Simply put it is the best, most flexible, most scalable front end for the Essbase platform on the market.  There is just nothing like it and I feel it will provide everything that I want to offer to my clients.

Want to learn more about Real Sports Analytics or multi-dimensional analytics?  E-mail me!