The Biznet Toolkit (cube.fp7) & associated templates have been designed by Luke Rochester who holds an honours degree in Industrial Engineering (University Prize) and a Grad Dip in Psychology.  Founder of Biznet and interviewed by Internet.com about the future of the internet Luke's achievements (and the interview) can be found by simply typing "Luke Rochester" into your favourite search engine.  Feel free to eMail Luke (info@biznet.com.au) for more information.

This article delves into detail but to feel the full weight of the concept you can either attend one of Luke's seminars or perhaps email him to arrange a Fika (that's Swedish for coffee and chat).

For over 10 years Luke has been developing multidimensional cubes.  A cube can be built in any number of ways however in the rest of this article the cube we are referring to is the one designed by Luke.

The cube itself is only a concept.  The concept is then applied through software programs.  There are sophisticated programs often referred to as OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processesing) software however you can also use a simple database or even a spreadsheet to hold a cube.  You can even hold a cube in a simple text file such as an ".xml" file or even the humble NotePad.  The cube data is then read by a program which will display graphs and tables based on the cube data.  For example our cube.xml file can be read by a simple text editor like notepad.  However Biznet offers a Cube Reader which unlike Notepad will not show you a stream of text but instead will show you a user interface that allows you to not only search and browse the cube but to also interact with it.  You can change data within the cube, update it, delete it and perform any number of functions on it.

The security for a cube.xml file is very simple.  It is very similar to physical security.  In other words if you have private information in the cube then keep it to yourself.  Store it on your laptop at your own risk or perhaps keep it on a USB drive if you want to be sure people can’t access it over a network or the Internet.  You can build security into our cube reader however for this to work the reader must have access to the entire cube.

Cubes only contain data (which is why they can be zipped up into such small files) however data in the cube can refer or "link" to any file on your computer.  Any document, photo, video, application, indeed any file at all that you can put onto your hard drive can be used in our cube.  The cube just stores a reference to the file so if you are transporting a cube you'll need to send linked files as well.  There’s no need to worry about directories or subdirectories within the “files” folder because your cube will store all of the relevant information needed to find that file later … whether it’s via browsing, navigating, searching or filtering.  The cube has a lot more power than the simple hierarchy structure used in Windows Explorer however you can use the same type of folder hierarchy in the cube if you wish. There are methods for embedding files directly into the cube but this is often a bad idea so will not be covered in this article.

More importantly though a cube stores dynamic information.  This means you can set-up a list of tasks then mail your cube off to your colleague. Your colleague then opens your cube and can make comments and update the status of their tasks and send it back to you.  They will not be able to change your data (unless you give them permission) but they can add new information which changes the status of a task.  The cube holds a history of all changes so you can always go back and see who changed what.

Your cube can also store contact information which may be maintained in another program like Outlook or your company's CRM program or even an accounting package.  You don’t need to maintain the information in more than one place since there are methods to extract the information from your source program and load it into the cube.  As before you can set the system up so that the data can only be changed in the source application but you can still add notes or change the status of attached information in the cube.

Not only can you store references to digital documents in your “links” folder you can also store references to objects in the physical world and using the location field and/or the asset’s ID number you can set the cube up so that it's easier to find physical objects.

So our cube can store information about people (or groups of people such as companies, customers, suppliers etc), it can store information about activities (such as projects, tasks, to do’s, objectives, strategies, visions, missions etc) and it can store information about resources (digital documents and files, hard copy documents, equipment, consumables etc etc).

Storing information about entities (Contacts, Resources and Activities) is just the beginning.  The cube can also store “Documented Records”.  A documented record often refers to some form of important information about an entity such as the time, money, communication (i.e. eMail) or even qualitative data like quality, performance, stress level, happiness level etc.

With an ability to store such a vast array of information you need to be able to categorise and sort the information so that it makes sense to you.  To achieve this we use labels in the cube which are a type of category and sub-category system.  We have some clever functions in our cubes which will automatically suggest labels and you can associate information via a “soft” or “hard” link.  A soft link is one that the cube suggests through it’s built-in AI engine.  A hard link is one that you or some other human has confirmed as being correct.  You can create high volume hard links once your confidence grows in the internal AI, which learns, becomes smarter and performs better the more you use the system and “grow” your cubes.

Documented Records can be imported into the system, for example your bank account is a pre-existing list of documented records where you can see that money has been deposited or withdrawn from an account on a certain day.  The note attached to the transaction is what you use as a human to remind you of what the transaction was for.  The built-in AI engine in a similar fashion uses this comment to “Tag” a record with a “soft” label.  You can run reports based on these soft labels or you can confirm the soft links (in batches … i.e. you can turn several hundred soft links into hard ones at the click of a button).

All of these contacts, resources, activities, documented records and labels are connected to each other in what is called an “event”.  This is the heart of our cube and by using events to glue the information together the cube is able to back track and / or simply display a list of events showing who, what, where, when, how and why two pieces of information are linked.  As a user you typically only see the most recent event, in other words the “current status”.  It’s only when you need to drill into the details that you may call up historical events, kind of like the way your own brain works.  You typically deal with conscious thought and it’s only when you need to “remember” something that you search back through older trails burnt into your brain.  Our AI engine works in a similar way.

If you’re interested in the practical applications of the theories above start with the FREE Demo.

Enjoy your experimenting and please feel free to email info@biznet.com.au with your questions and comments.