From Operational to Analytical Reporting with

BusinessObjects Data Integrator

Definitions Helping to Meet the Needs of All BI Users

A data warehouse is a Reporting directly from operational systems is natural and common. However,
database dedicated for as data volumes, data sources, and users of business intelligence (BI) tools grow,
decision support. It organizations must determine how to unify disparate departmental initiatives
collects and integrates and ensure that these users are working with information that is consistent,
data from disparate accurate, and relevant. BI tools help turn operational data into information that
enables better decision making and improved visibility. But this is only possible
systems across
if users are working with the right tools, and more importantly, the right data.
departments and
delivers a single source
As BI end-user populations grow, analytical requirements typically do as well.
of truth.
Users begin to want to interact with information, analyze trends, and potentially
A data mart collects perform their own ad hoc queries. For this to be possible, the right infrastructure
data on a specific must be established. Whether it is subject-area data marts, a centralized data
subject area such as warehouse, or an operational data store, organizations need to determine the
sales or customer right strategy that will support operational reporting as well as ad hoc query and
information. It can be a analysis, and performance management requirements across the enterprise.
subset of data
warehouse data and it
is intended to meet the
needs of a single
department.

An operational data
store (ODS) is an
updatable set of
integrated data used
for enterprise-wide
tactical decision
making. It contains live
data, not snapshots,
and has minimal
history retained.

End- user BI tools can deliver data directly from operational systems such as legacy apps,
mainframes, databases, enterprise applications, web applications, and XML files, but most
organizations develop a target system that serves the sole purpose decision support.

This Information Sheet will summarize why and when integrating data is the
right approach for an enterprise information infrastructure. It will also outline
what is required in a data integration platform to help organizations build and
maintain this environment and summarize the key aspects of BusinessObjects
Data Integrator that make it a truly enterprise-class solution.
 From Operational to Analytical Reporting with Data Integrator

Integrating Data
Definitions
So why do organizations develop a target system such as a data warehouse or
Extract, transform, and
data mart? Here a few of the key reasons:
load (ETL) tools play a
critical part in creating
For organizations that have inconsistent data in different systems a data
data warehouses, warehouse strategy can help clean up these inconsistencies by providing a
which form the single source of truth.
bedrock of BI. ETL Hitting your operational systems with query requests or reporting jobs can
tools sit at the drain its resources from doing the job for which it was intended. Building a
intersection of myriad data mart or warehouse alleviates performance hits on your transactional
source and target systems while improving query and report performance for decision
systems and act as a support.
funnel to pull together Although end-user tools and applications can join data from different
and blend sources, it is often a complex job requiring time and performance.
heterogeneous data Bad data leads to bad decisions. A data warehouse approach provides the
into a consistent opportunity for organizations to analyze and correct bad data such as name
format and meaning and addresses.
and populate data Most operational systems such as a CRM system provide only customer
warehouses.* transactions and inquiries that last up to one to two years. Old data is
archived. If you want to analyze customer behavior over a long period of
time, you will need a system that can support large amounts of data.
A data warehouse provides the infrastructure for better security protocols.
Operational systems are frequently changing. Running reports at different
times can result in different results. With BI users accessing integrated data,
they will know when it has been refreshed and they will have access to
historical information.
A data warehouse allows organizations to integrate data from outside
sources so it can be combined, rationalized, cleansed, and aggregated in a
single environment that can provide a comprehensive organizational view.

How to Integrate Data

While a data warehouse provides tangible benefits, developing and maintaining
one is not easy. Analyst firms estimate that up to 80% of the effort of building
and maintaining a BI solution is in managing the data extraction, transformation,
and loading (ETL) process. Failing to properly manage this difficult aspect of a BI
deployment is one of the primary reasons some data warehousing projects fail.
ETL processes bring together and combine data from multiple source systems
into a data warehouse, enabling all BI users to work off a single, integrated set of
data—a single version of the truth. The result is an organization that no longer
spins its wheels collecting data or arguing about whose data is correct, but one
that uses information as a key process enabler and competitive weapon.

The ETL process includes designing a target, mapping sources to target,

* Source: TDWI Report Series:
extracting data from sources, transforming data for the target, scheduling and
Evaluating ETL and Data
monitoring processes, and managing the overall BI environment.
Integration Platforms, Wayne

Eckerson & Colin White, 2003.

• Extraction is the physical collection of data. This step begins by designing

and creating the target data schema. Then the appropriate data sources must
be identified and its format, reliability, and value must be determined.
From Operational to Analytical Reporting with Data Integrator

Organizations on average have no less then eight operational systems and

accessing them requires an understanding of the business model and
meaning of data elements and semantics.

• Transformation involves turning raw data into more business-descriptive

content that is appropriate for end user BI. It includes a strategy for changed
data capture or other warehouse refreshing. It can also include cleansing:
eliminating duplicates, correcting wrong values, replacing missing values,
and improving overall data quality. Some transformation examples are
slowly changing dimensions, table comparison, hierarchy flattening,
surrogate key generation, heterogeneous joins, user-defined functions, data-
type conversion, and user-defined functions.
• Loading is the process of moving the transformed data into the target
relational database. It includes administration steps of scheduling and
monitoring of jobs that are being processed in shorter and shorter batch
windows and in some cases real-time. Data can also be loaded into a staging area
or operational data store.

The right ETL tool can speed BI deployments, minimize the impact of systems
changes and new user requirements, and mitigate overall project risk.

BusinessObjects Data Integrator

Business Objects provides best-of-breed ETL technology that is integrated with
marketing leading end-user BI tools and analytic applications, helping to deliver
greater IT and end-user productivity, faster time to results, a lower total cost of
ownership (TCO), single vendor accountability, and reduced project risk.

BusinessObjects Data Integrator enables organizations to access, integrate, and

deliver data across the enterprise. Data Integrator allows organizations to
develop and maintain 98% of their complex ETL routines without writing or
maintaining custom code. It means BI can be deployed faster and ongoing
maintenance challenges of growing data volumes and continuous change can be
managed in an easy to use and administer environment.
 BusinessObjects Data Integrator Overview

Data Integrator can

help: Data Integrator is capable of large-scale data movement in both batch and real-
Accelerate your BI time. Powerful enterprise-class features include:
deployment time
and reduce project • One data integration environment for both batch (volume) and real-time
costs (high frequency) data movement
Increase IT • Parallel performance architecture to break large ETL jobs into smaller pieces
productivity and that can run in parallel, leveraging all of your computing resources, and
reduce your total
meeting ever shrinking batch windows
cost of ownership
• Grid computing for multi-server load balancing, scalability, and fault
Ensure your BI
users are always tolerance
working with • Broad source and target support including native access to all major
credible, databases, flat files, XML, ODBC, and mainframe sources
meaningful • Native integration with real-time environments through XML
information • Metadata level integration to enterprise applications like SAP, PeopleSoft,
Optimize your Oracle, J.D. Edwards, Siebel, and prebuilt data marts to accelerate BI projects
return on on these systems
investment from
• Data cleansing via seamless, in memory, integration with First Logic and a
enterprise
applications
native adapter to Trillium

Data Integrator provides a productive single, easy-to-use interface for designing,

testing, debugging, running, and monitoring ETL jobs as well as a codeless,
object oriented development environment. Key features include:

• Reuse with inheritance

• Automatic documentation as metadata
• Complete suite of powerful transformation objects and functions
• Collaborative development environment with multi-user check in / check
out and version control
• Built in data preview and profiling
• Graphical workflow for scheduling jobs including external processes
• Interactive debugging and error trapping

While able to standalone as a best-of-breed data integration development

platform, Data Integrator is also tightly integrated with the Business Objects
information infrastructure, helping organizations to better manage and maintain
their complete, end-to-end BI environment. Key features include:

• Ability to exchange metadata via CWM interface with over 65 other tools
• Automatic documentation of all development work in repository
• End-to-end impact analysis reports showing change impact on everything
from sources to reports
• Automated change propagation: generation & incremental updates of
Business Objects universes
• Data lineage from reports showing source systems, when updated, how
metrics were calculated, filters applied, etc.
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