From Singapore Business to Scuba Diving: Exploring Tioman and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia

Panoramic view of Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Panoramic view of Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

After a grueling week-long business trip in Singapore, I was ready for some much-needed rest and relaxation. And what better way to unwind than by exploring the underwater world of ABC Bay in Tioman, Malaysia?

I hopped on a bus from Singapore to Tioman Island and was immediately greeted by lush rainforest and crystal clear waters. The island was smaller than I expected, but it was packed with activities to keep me busy. Of course, scuba diving was the main attraction and ABC Bay did not disappoint. The colorful coral reefs and diverse marine life made for an unforgettable experience.

Apart from diving and snorkeling, Tioman Island also offers a range of activities for visitors. You can go trekking in the island’s lush rainforest, explore the cascading waterfalls, or simply relax on the pristine beaches. The island also has several historical sites, including the remains of a Dutch fort and a Chinese temple.

After a few days of diving, I was ready to move on to my next destination: Kuala Lumpur. The capital of Malaysia was a stark contrast to the laid-back island atmosphere of Tioman. I spent my days wandering the bustling streets, taking in the sights and sounds. The Petronas Towers were a definite highlight, as were the Batu Caves and Merdeka Square.

The Batu Caves are located inside a limestone hill and can be accessed by a long flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs is a temple complex with colorful statues and ornate architecture. The sun is shining brightly in the blue sky, casting a warm glow over the entire scene.

But what really stood out to me during my time in Kuala Lumpur was the food. Malaysian cuisine is a melting pot of Malay, Chinese, and Indian influences, and it did not disappoint. One of my favorite dishes was nasi lemak, a fragrant rice dish cooked in coconut milk and served with spicy sambal, fried anchovies, and peanuts. I also loved trying all the different types of satay, especially the chicken and beef varieties.

Overall, my trip to Tioman and Kuala Lumpur was the perfect combination of adventure and relaxation. Whether you’re looking for world-class diving or delicious food, Malaysia has something for everyone. So why not add it to your travel bucket list?

Making the Most of a Business Trip to Singapore: Sightseeing Despite a Busy Schedule

Panoramic view of Gardens by the Bay showing Supertrees and the Cloud Forest Dome covered in vegetation and a waterfall
Panoramic view of Gardens by the Bay showing Supertrees and the Cloud Forest Dome covered in vegetation and a waterfall

As I was packing my bags for my business trip to Singapore, I was filled with excitement and anticipation. I had the honor to host the Data Night Out event! I knew that my days would be packed with meetings, leaving little time for sightseeing. But, being an avid traveler, I was determined to make the most of my time in Singapore, even if it meant squeezing in a few hours of exploration between work commitments.

Fortunately, I was able to make the most of my limited time in Singapore. I started my day by waking up early and taking a quick stroll around the Marina Bay area, which is famous for its stunning architecture and beautiful waterfront promenade. The iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel was my home base for the trip, and its rooftop infinity pool provided a much-needed respite from the stress of business meetings.

During the day, I made sure to take advantage of my lunch breaks and explore the local cuisine. Singapore is a foodie’s paradise, with a diverse range of culinary delights on offer. One of my favorite dishes was the famous Hainanese chicken rice, which can be found at hawker centers throughout the city.

In the evenings, I made sure to take in some of the local sights. I visited the Gardens by the Bay, which is home to a stunning array of flora and fauna, and also took a stroll through the colorful streets of Chinatown. The Singapore skyline is also not to be missed, especially at night when the city lights up.

Despite the packed schedule, I was able to make the most of my time in Singapore and experience some of the best that the city has to offer. It was a reminder that even when traveling for business, there is always time for adventure. These are the top spots you should be able to squeeze into your Singapore business trip:

    1. Marina Bay Sands: The iconic hotel with its rooftop infinity pool is a symbol of Singapore’s modernity and luxury – you won’t regret staying in this hotel!
    2. Gardens by the Bay: A nature lover’s paradise, this park is home to an impressive collection of flora and fauna, including the towering Supertrees.
    3. Chinatown: A vibrant neighborhood filled with colorful architecture, traditional shops, and some of the city’s best street food.
    4. Sentosa Island: A popular resort island that offers a range of activities, from relaxing on the beach to thrill-seeking adventures.
    5. Merlion Park: The famous Merlion statue is a must-see landmark in Singapore and offers great views of Marina Bay.

If you find yourself in Singapore for business, don’t miss out on some of the city’s must-see sights, such as Marina Bay, Gardens by the Bay, and Chinatown. And of course, be sure to indulge in the local cuisine. You never know when you might stumble upon your new favorite dish.

In my upcoming blog post, I’ll take you on a journey through Tioman Island and Kuala Lumpur, and share some of the unforgettable experiences and hidden gems that I discovered along the way. From exploring the island’s hidden coves and waterfalls to sampling the local cuisine and diving with colorful fish and sharks, Tioman truly has something for everyone.

5 Takeaways from Tableau’s Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing

What makes Hyper so fast?
The Future of Enterprise Analytics: Hyper can handle both OLTP and OLAP simultaneously. In the future it will address NoSQL and graph workloads.

1. What is Hyper’s key benefit?

Hyper is a Hybrid transactional/analytical processing (HTAP) database system and replaces Tableau Data Extracts (TDE). The change will be mostly transparent for end users, other than everything being faster. Hyper significantly improves extract refresh times, query times and overall performance.

2. What is Hybrid transactional/analytical processing?

As defined by Gartner:

Hybrid transaction/analytical processing (HTAP) is an emerging application architecture that „breaks the wall“ between transaction processing and analytics. It enables more informed and „in business real time“ decision making.

The two areas of online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP) present different challenges for database architectures. Currently, customers with high rates of mission-critical transactions have split their data into two separate systems, one database for OLTP and one so-called data warehouse for OLAP. While allowing for decent transaction rates, this separation has many disadvantages including data freshness issues due to the delay caused by only periodically initiating the Extract Transform Load (ETL) data staging and excessive resource consumption due to maintaining two separate information systems.

3. Does Hyper satisfy the ACID properties?

Hyper, initially developed at the Technical University of Munich and acquired by Tableau in 2016, can handle both OLTP and OLAP simultaneously. Hyper possesses the rare quality of being able to handle data updates and insertions at the same time as queries by using hardware-assisted replication mechanisms to maintain consistent snapshots of the transactional data. Hyper is an in-memory database that guarantees the ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) of OLTP transactions and executes OLAP query sessions (multiple queries) on the same, arbitrarily current and consistent snapshot.

4. What makes Hyper so fast?

The utilization of the processor-inherent support for virtual memory management (address translation, caching, copy on update) yields both at the same time: unprecedentedly high transaction rates as high as 100,000 per second and very fast OLAP query response times on a single system executing both workloads in parallel. This would support real-time streaming of data in future releases of Tableau. These performance increases come from the nature of the Hyper data structures, but also from smart use of contemporary hardware technology, and particularly nvRam memory. Additional cores provide a linear increment in performance.

5. What does this mean for Tableau?

With Hyper now powering the Tableau platform, your organization will see faster extract creation and better query performance for large data sets. Since Hyper is designed to handle exceptionally large data sets, you can choose to extract your data based on what you need, not data volume limitations. Hyper improves performance for common computationally-intensive queries, like count distinct, calculated fields, and text field manipulations. This performance boost will improve your entire Enterprise Analytics workflow.

Join our „The Future of Enterprise Analytics“ events and get a sneak peak at upcoming features and the Tableau Roadmap: 14th of November in Düsseldorf and 6th of December in Frankfurt.

[Update 20 Dec 2017] Hyper Kickoff Event: Join us for the Hyper Kickoff Event at the 18th of January 2018 in Tableau’s Frankfurt Office.

Data Science Toolbox: How to use Julia with Tableau

Julia in Tableau: R allows Tableau to execute Julia code on the fly, enhancing your data analytics experience.
Julia in Tableau: R allows Tableau to execute Julia code on the fly, enhancing your data analytics experience.

Michael, a data scientist, who is working for a German railway and logistics company, recently told me during a FATUG Meetup that he loves Tableau’s R integration and Tableau’s Python integration. As he continued, he raised the question of using functions they have written in Julia. Julia, a high-level dynamic programming language for high-performance numerical analysis, is an integral part of the newly developed data strategy in Michael’s organization.

Tableau, however, does not come with native support for Julia. I didn’t want to keep Michael’s team down and was looking for an alternative way to integrate Julia with Tableau.

This solution is working flawlessly in a production environment for several months. In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through the installation and connecting Tableau with R and Julia. I will also give you an example of calling a Julia statement from Tableau to calculate the sphere volume.

Step by Step: Integrating Julia in Tableau

1. Install Julia and add PATH variable

You can download Julia from julialang.org. Add Julia’s installation path to the PATH environment variable.

2. Install R, XRJulia, and RServe

You can download base R from r-project.org. Next, invoke R from the terminal to install the XRJulia and the RServe packages:

> install.packages("XRJulia")
> install.packages("Rserve")

XRJulia provides an interface from R to Julia. RServe is a TCP/IP server that allows Tableau to use facilities of R.

3. Load libraries and start RServe

After packages are successfully installed, we load them and run RServe:

> library(XRJulia)
> library(Rserve)
> Rserve()

Make sure to repeat this step every time you restart your R session.

4. Connecting Tableau to RServe

Now let’s open the Help menu in Tableau Desktop and choose Settings and Performance >Manage External Service connection to open the External Service Connection dialog box:

TC17 External Service Connection

Enter a server name using a domain or an IP address and specify a port. Port 6311 is the default port used by Rserve. Take a look at my R tutorial to learn more about Tableau’s R integration.

5. Adding Julia code to a Calculated Field

You can invoke Calculated Field functions called SCRIPT_STR, SCRIPT_REAL, SCRIPT_BOOL, and SCRIPT_INT to embed your Julia code in Tableau, such as this simple snippet that calculates sphere volume:


SCRIPT_INT('
library(XRJulia)
if (!exists("ev")) ev <- RJulia()
y <- juliaEval("
4 / 3 * %s * ' + STR([Factor]) + ' * pi ^ 3
", .arg1)
',
[Radius])

view raw

tc17_julia_tableau_sphere.txt

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

6. Use Calculated Field in Tableau

You can now use your Julia calculation as an alternate Calculated Field in your Tableau worksheet:

Using Julia within calculations in Tableau (click to enlarge)
Using Julia calculations within Tableau (click to enlarge)

Feel free to download the Tableau Packaged Workbook (twbx) here.

Further Reading: Mastering Julia

If you want to go beyond this tutorial and explore more about Julia in the context of data science, I recommend the book Mastering Julia. You can find it here.

Further Reading: Visual Analytics with Tableau

Join the data science conversation and follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn for more tips, tricks, and tutorials on Julia in Tableau and other data analytics topics. If you’re looking to master Tableau, don’t forget to preorder your copy of my upcoming book, Visual Analytics with Tableau. (Amazon). It offers an in-depth exploration of data visualization techniques and best practices.

Also, feel free to comment and share my Tableau Julia Tutorial tweet:

Social Media and the Customer-centric Data Strategy #data17 #resources

Social media marketing mix
Do you analyze your social media marketing mix? | Photo Credit: via Richard Goodwin

With over 3 billion active social media users, establishing an active presence on social media networks is becoming increasingly essential in getting your business front of your ideal audience. These days, more and more consumers are looking to engage, connect and communicate with their favorite brands on social media.

Adding social media to your customer-centric data strategy will help boost brand awareness, increase followership, drive traffic to your website and generate leads for your sales funnel. In 2017, no organization should be without a plan that actively places their brand on social media, and analyzes their social media data.

Once you’ve started diving into social media analytics, how do you bring it to the next level? This session covers a customer-centric data strategy for scaling a social media data program.

Here are the links (i.e. additional resources) featured during the session to help you formulate your social media data program in order to build a stronger presence and retrieve powerful insights:

The Data Opportunity

TC17 Social Media Slides: The Data Opportunity

Focus on relevant metrics for your strategy

TC17 Social Media Slides: Sentiment Analysis

How to get Social Media in Tableau?

TC17 Social Media Slides: 3rd Party Platform Talkwalker

Tips to Level Up

TC17 Social Media Slides: Unshorten URLs in Tableau with R

Tutorials and Slide Set

The slides and tutorials presented at Tableau Conference on Tour in Berlin are also available on SlideShare, and on YouTube in English and German.

English Tutorials

German Tutorials

Slide Set