Combining Bluemix, Open Data on Tourism and Watson Analytics for some Friday Insight

Inbound and Outbound Tourism, Watson Analytics

Yup, it is Friday again and the weekend is coming closer and closer. The Carnival or Fasnet/Fastnacht season is close to its peak and some school holidays and inofficial holidays are coming up late next week. Tourists are pouring into carnival strongholds. Why not take some time today to test drive the Bluemix Analytics Exchange and Watson Analytics with tourism data and try to get some insight?

A Cache of Identities and a Sequence of Events

Bits and Bytes of
Sequences

Recently I received an interesting question: DB2 and other database systems have a feature to automatically generate numbers in a specified order. For DB2 this generator is called a sequence. When it is directly used to assign values to a column of a table, the term identity column is used. The next value of a sequence or identity column is derived by incrementing the last value by a specified amount. This works well, but sometimes there is a gap. Why?

The Cloud, Mood-Enhancing Substances, World Economic Forum, and More

DataWorks and Connect & Compose

Right now, the Winter sky is mostly covered by some low hanging clouds, giving way only for some random rays of sun. The past weeks I have been plagued by a cold which drew most of my energy. Now I am back, thanks to some mood-enhancing substances (a.k.a. lots of dark chocolate) and some rest. So what else, in addition to the usual World Economic Forum, is going on?