Adrian Ward is an Oracle ACE Associate who started working in Siebel Analytics back in 2001 and quickly realized the potential in the technology. He formed the UK's first independent consultancy focusing purely on OBIEE (nee Siebel Analytics) and Oracle BI Applications. He has led many large successful OBIEE implementations in a wide range of business sectors, from investment banking to military operations. His deep technical OBIEE and BI Applications knowledge has been applied on dozens of projects throughout the globe, including HR, Sales, Service, Pharma, and Custom Analytics, which is enabling hundreds of thousands of users in their day-to-day roles.

He was also one of the first bloggers on Oracle BIEE at http://www.obiee.info and today runs the Addidici OBIEE consultancy, which has operations in the UK, Europe, and South Africa. Adrian runs one of the largest Oracle BI networking groups on LinkedIn -- Oracle Business Intelligence, is an active tweeter (@Addidici), is a speaker at Oracle conferences, and helps others learn.

In his spare time, he loves sailing at Hayling Island, skiing, enjoying life with his family, and learning new technologies.

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Sarah, and wonderful children, Hugh and Harriet who are the coolest dudes in the world.

Many thanks to Christian and Haroun for their patience in writing the second book, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Christian Screen (@christianscreen) is an Oracle ACE, technologist, and Business Intelligence evangelist with over 20 years of experience in technology ranging from low-level programming, e-commerce, Data Warehousing, Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management, product management, IoT, and of course, analytics. Founder of Art of BI Software and Consulting Group, one of Oracle’s top Oracle Analytics partners in North America, his company was acquired by Datavail (@datavail) Corporation in 2016.

In his spare time, he enjoys writing technical articles, learning new technologies, inventing new products, writing software, spending time with his family, trying to change the world, and running his blog and podcast which are read and heard all across the globe.

I would like to thank my co-authors on this book, in particular Adrian Ward, with extreme gratitude for completing many of the chores related to the care, watering, and feeding required to push the writing and publishing of this book along - ultimately over the finish line.

Indeed, I thank my wife and children for putting up with my late night writing sessions and booked-up weekends working on this book and the mental blockage that rides along with such a task. I thank my mother, brothers, and sister for their support in my endeavors, which in life attributes to the person I’ve been able to become, giving me the ability to contribute in such challenging enterprises.

Without the support of the user group communities such as ODTUG, IOUG, and UKOUG and great conferences such as Collaborate, KScope, and Oracle Open World, our message of great business intelligence wouldn’t be as strong. Thank you all those who: purchased this book, support your local user group communities, follow us on social media, read our blogs, and attend our presentation sessions at conferences; you make efforts such as writing this book possible.

Haroun Khan is one of Europe's leading OBIEE consultants. A computer science graduate of Imperial College, London, he has been involved with OBIEE from its early days as an acquisition from nQuire by Siebel, and subsequently as part of the Oracle family. Haroun worked as a consultant on projects worldwide for Siebel and as a Principal Consultant for Oracle over a period of 10 years. He has specialized in BI and data warehousing over a longer period including time working at MicroStrategy.

Haroun is also an entrepreneur, successfully founding and currently running the online travel site https://www.jrpass.com/. His experience in e-commerce has given him new insight into how analytics is vital to the running of any business nowadays. He engages with cohort analysis, clickstream analytics, and conversion tracking.

He still freelances in leading and designing projects in the traditional BI and data warehousing space. In his downtime, Haroun likes to climb, is an avid squash player, and can sometimes be found prone, deep in despair, as he tries his hands at writing a novel.