Care and Feeding of a Data Warehouse Mary Louise Powers Lehigh University
SCT Banner® Technical Environment All SCT Banner modules installed All ‘Web for’ products installed AIX/Unix, Oracle 8i Maintained by Enterprise Systems (ESI)
Project Background Request for a data warehouse from Institutional Research (IR) Strategic decision support Trend analysis Efficiency and accuracy Single institutional data source
Project Background Warehouse definition Time slice, Pre-defined events Strategic, not transactional Not a Data Mart for operational reporting Direct / indirect customers Data, not reports
Project Scope Design and implementation from Spring 2001 to Fall 2002 Graduation back to 1992 Enrollment/Registration from Fall 2001 Primary reporting source for IR
Design Focused on enrolled students, courses, graduation Reporting needs Business processes Technical interest in Dimensional Model and Star Schema
Star Schema
Design High level technical design Translated internal processes into schema Allowed for implementation of flat tables Stop gap measure Supporting data from Admissions & Financial Aid
Software Requirements Extraction, translations, cleansing Loading and warehouse table builds Creation of summary tables and views SCT Banner Executive-Self Service (WFE) Data Warehouse Executive Briefing Center Administrative interface
Production Environment Three databases SCT Banner Production “Stage” (copy of SCT Banner Production) Built from Banner export Provides “snapshot” of Banner at critical point in time – data is frozen Limited access Data Warehouse
Production Operations Enrollment / Registration / Graduation extracts Enrollment/Registration Events: 10th day census Midterm census Last day of class Close of term
Production Operations Pre-export audit reporting – SCT Banner production Export of SCT Banner production database Create Stage database from export (can be refreshed at any point in time)
Production Operations Pre-extract audit reporting – Stage Clean up of Stage database Synchronize of Stage and Banner corrections Archive corrected copy of Stage Audit trail Run warehouse maintenance process
Customizations / Enhancements Challenges Data quality Time involvement Getting accurate specifications Post Refresh Process
Administering / Managing Production Operations Manage events processing SCT Luminis 3 Portal – Calendar and task list Operations Who runs the warehouse Support and troubleshooting Security Request Tracking System
Technical Infrastructure maintenance Source code housekeeping Archiving processes WFE upgrade Oracle upgrades Optimize Stage database creation
Documentation Metadata Preliminary stage Quest Software - Toad ® Common Lehigh definitions
Documentation
Work in Progress You are never done Data retention requirements - TBD Data integrity issues Potential for implementation of other areas Changing business perspectives (New VP’s, etc)
Conclusion On going challenges Benefits Complexity of the system Timing and synchronization Lehigh’s data quality requirements Benefits Primary data source for IR Ease of use for historical reporting Stability of data
References Adamson, C. & Venerable, M. (1998) Data Warehouse Design Solutions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dodge, G. & Gorman, T. (1998) Oracle8 Data Warehousing, A Hands on Guide to Designing, Building, and Managing Oracle Data Warehouses. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kimball, R. (1996) The Data Warehouse Toolkit. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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