ODBC_CONNECT Fatal Error in PHP on Apache running on RHEL

Sometimes you might encounter a fatal error on your attempt to connect to Netezza database from your PHP application. Here are the things to check

1. Check if a driver manager like unixODBC is installed
2. Check if the odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini files are placed in their right location
3. Check if a user or system DSN has been created
4. Check if you can connect to the database using isql
5. Check if the php-odbc package is installed, if not then install it by executing yum install php-odbc

Big Data: Check Under the Hood

Data is a commodity in business. To become useful information, data must be put into a specific business context. Without information, today’s businesses can’t function. Without the right information, available to the right people at the right time, an organization cannot make the right decisions nor take the right actions, nor compete effectively and prosper.

Read More: Big Data: Check Under the Hood - Information Management Blogs Article

Streamlining Business Intelligence Projects

Streamlining #BI Projects: How a Techno-Functional Expert Can Help - BI is all about techno-functional feedproxy.google.com/~r/tdwi-news/~…

— Sachin Sinha (@SachinSinha) March 10, 2013

3 Things You Need to Know about Big Data

3 Things You Need to Know about #BigData -These are not the 3 Vs but rather #dataintegrity, #dataquality, and the nuances of #analysis feedproxy.google.com/~r/tdwi-news/~…
— Sachin Sinha (@SachinSinha) March 10, 2013

PHP test page with phpinfo showing blank page

One of the most common ways to test a successful PHP install is to place a test PHP file in the following location on your RHEL server


/var/www/html/


Only the following lines need to be put in the file


<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Once that is done, open a web browser and type the url : http://yourdomain.com/phptest.php or http://localhost/phptest.php where phptest.php is the filename you gave.


If the result comes back with a page full of information then PHP is successfully installed and running. If it comes with a blank page then among other things check the permissions on the file. File should have 755 for it to show up in the browser. A quick chmod 755 will solve the problem in most cases.

Fear of lock-in dampens cloud adoption

Fear of lock-in dampens #cloud adoption flip.it/6vGdr will this hamper #Amazon rise to #bigdata prominence on the back of #redshift

— Sachin Sinha (@SachinSinha) March 6, 2013

Big Data Cartoon: what to do with 100,000 Warehouses?

Source: Big Data Cartoon: what do to with 100,000 Warehouses?

Agile BI: How to Turn Vague Ideas into Tangible Deliverables

Business intelligence has become a catch-all term used within IT to refer to the tools that drive business value and deliver on IT's promise of being innovative and improving an enterprise's top line, rather than IT being simply a cost center.

The majority of BI programs begin with an information or data strategy and a 3-5 year road map for implementing the strategy. The road map, usually built at a high level, categorizes the plan into major groups, such as enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence, data governance and quality, operational reporting, and advanced analytics. When it comes to executing these programs (especially BI), many people struggle with the high-level outline and tight timeline. How do you move towards shaping something concrete? How do you deliver value with some quick wins and maintain the momentum throughout the life of the program?

Read More: Agile BI: How to Turn Vague Ideas into Tangible Deliverables -- TDWI -The Data Warehousing Institute