Data Warehouse Extension      White Paper: EII Supercharges the DW

Add Value to Your Data Warehouse Investments

Data warehouses are essential repositories of data for enterprises enabling rich reporting and multi-dimensional analysis.

Data Warehouses Alone Cannot Meet All Your Needs
The speed of business is increasing. New data sources are proliferating. Business users are demanding more up-to-date information as well additional data that was not originally designed into your ETL scripts and data warehouses. In this environment, data warehouses alone may not meet all your data needs.

Composite Data Integration Fills the Gap

Composite lets you extend the breadth of data available so you can enrich your reporting and analytics. Composite adds value to your data warehouse investments in a number of ways:

• Extend Queries Beyond Data Warehouses. Conduct ad-hoc queries to gather information from multiple databases and applications which are not part of your data warehouse schema. Since less than 20% of enterprise data actually typically resides in your warehouses, Composite lets you provide a full 360-degree view of an organization.
• Real-time Information. While change data capture can be of some help, Composite lets you bypass the data warehouse, if needed, to go straight to the data source to access real-time information not part of the batch ETL process or time window.
• Real-time Plus Historical Data. Composite lets you access live data in combination with historical data already in your warehouse. Gain a more insightful view of how current activities relate to historical trends.
• Add Web Data. Composite makes it easier to incorporate Web data into your business decision support. Your users rely heavily on external information, primarily in the form of XML these days, as part of their decision-making process. With Composite you can combine XML with traditional RDBMS and warehouse formats so you can analyze a richer set of data.
• Support Third Party Collaboration. When dealing with external entities, replicating their data into your data warehouse is often times not permitted. Composite lets you use data from customers, partners, and other external entities as part of reporting and analytics, without replication.
• Virtual Data Layer. Create a single, virtual data source for BI tools to access to multiple data sources, including your warehouses. Less time spent worrying about accessing and connecting to a myriad of data sources, means more time for analysis.
• Data Warehouse Prototyping. Because Composite does not require physical warehouse builds and testing, you can use Composite as rapid development technique for large data warehouse projects. This is especially important when you want to try several data design approaches. Getting the data right and running in Composite can be four times faster than a warehouse. Subsequent translation of Composite views into ETL plans and warehouse schemas is a snap.
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership. Composite lets you avoid implementation and maintenance costs associated with the creation of new data repositories or the extension of current warehouse schemas. Leverage existing investment in business intelligence desktops and servers.
  

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