What Is a Data Warehouse

Question 1 What is a data warehouse? What problems does it solve for a business? A data warehouse is a place where data is stored for archival purpose, analysis purpose. Usually a data warehouse is either a single computer or many computers servers tied together to create one giant computer systems. Data warehouse solve a lot of problems to companies as it helps to structure files and avoid unnecessary duplication of data.Data warehouse also allows to easily updating data and encourages management to regard data as a resource that must be properly managed just as any other resources. Question1B What do you see as the benefits of using a web-like browser to access information from a data warehouse? The benefits of using a web browser to access information from a data warehouse is that it allows users to have access to different search engines and opens up different links with the relevance key search. Some results will be more complete than others as they have different ways of indexi ng websites.Using a web browser to access information from a data warehouse is also useful as the links give you access to images and videos which interact users but can also slow down the logon level of speed operations meaning that the data warehouse is accessed at a fast speed. Question2 The SAP system is a collection of software that performs standard business functions for corporations. Here are some applications developed by SAP for consumers use, they are regrouped into categories of utilities[1]. Financials applications The SAP Financials applications contain all of the functionality needed for enterprise-wide financial management. These include: Financial Accounting (FI), Provides a complete financial accounting solution, including income statements, balance sheets, journals, ledgers, and all areas of financial accounting. †¢ Enterprise Controlling (EC): Assists in controller tasks. †¢ Capital Investment Management (IM): Assists finance organizations in their capi tal investments and tracking. †¢ Controlling (CO): Assists the controller organization. †¢ Treasury (TR): Assists with transactions related to the U. S. Treasury. Human Resources applications †¢ Personnel Administration (PA): Assists with all areas of personnel administration, including applicant tracking and personnel history. Personnel Development (PD): Assists with training and educational status of employees. These systems handle all of the mundane HR tasks, such as personnel and payroll, and also a number of more esoteric HR functions, such as seminar and convention management. Logistics applications The SAP Logistics applications include SAP's most popular modules. †¢ Materials Management (MM): Manages raw materials, inventory, and all aspects of goods manufacturing. †¢ Production Planning (PP):Offers sophisticated tools for planning large production environments. General Logistics (LO): Manages logistics for companies that require large-scale deployme nt of goods and resources. †¢ Sales and Distribution (SD): Manages the inventory and distribution of finished goods. †¢ Plant Maintenance (PM): Manages the resources required for large manufacturing plants. †¢ Quality Management (QM): Captures and maintains quality control for manufacturing environments. †¢ Project System (PS): Assists with the scheduling of project tasks and interdependencies between tasks. ;; Oracle is the leading company in a leading software development and provides usiness with systems and information with reliable, secure, and integrated technologies[2].These software’s include: †¢ Agile Link-to-SAP XI: Agile Product Collaboration provides a comprehensive solution to manage bill of material (BOM), item, and engineering change order (ECO) data necessary for product content collaboration across the manufacturing supply chain. †¢ Oracle Communications for SAP RM-CA Manage: SAP RM-CA Manager integrates the BRM billing platform with SAP Revenue Management–Contract Accounting (SAP RM-CA), a revenue management system that SAP offers to the telecommunications industry Siebel Connector for SAP R/3: The Siebel Connector for SAP R/3 supports both synchronous and asynchronous transactions across application boundaries. The resulting consistency of data provides efficient coordination between front and back-office operations. †¢ Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (BI Apps) are prebuilt BI solutions that deliver intuitive, role-based intelligence for everyone in an organisation that enable better decisions, actions, and business processes.Based on best practices, these solutions enable organisations to gain greater insight and value from a range of data sources and applications including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and third party systems such as SAP. †¢ Imaging ; Process Management (I/PM), part of the Stellent assets, provides organizations with a scalable solution focused on process-oriented imaging applications and image-enabling enterprise applications.With I/PM, organizations can quickly integrate their content and processes directly with Oracle and other third party enterprise applications, such as EBS, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards Enterprise One and JD Edwards World, Microsoft Business Solutions, SAP, Lawson, and Baan. Here are the advantages of these two very competitive companies in the industry of enterprise application software reported by Eweek[3]. Oracle advantages |Control of the Oracle database | |Without data, enterprise applications are little more than empty containers.As the Oracle database platform evolves, it is | |becoming the data management system for enterprise applications. | | | |More open environment | |Oracle has done a better job of embracing Web- and Java-based application development paradigms that are familiar to a broader| |number of developers. | | |Customers relationship management | |Due to its acquisitions of Siebel and PeopleSoft, Oracle has a deeper knowledge of business processes, driven more often than | |not by front-end CRM (customer relationship management) applications. | | | |Middleware | |Oracle isnt that much better than SAP in this category, but at least Oracle has recognized its weakness in the middleware area| |enough to try and acquire BEA. | | |Mid market channel | |Oracle has a stronger history in the channel than SAP, and, as such, has a better ability to leverage third-party solution | |providers in the small and midsize business market. | | | |Flexibility | |Oracle is a little more flexible in its approach to the business processes it will support, compared with the more | |hierarchical SAP model. | | |Global development Team | |Oracle development teams work together around the globe with relatively equal levels of autonomy. | | | |More third party application | |Years of working with ISVs on its database have created a stronger Oracle ecosystem. | | |Stronger OEM par tnership | |The Oracle database is a critical piece of enterprise software driving server sales for Dell and Hewlett-Packard (and making | |the latter companys sales force an extension | SAP advantages Legion of consultants | |A large army’s worth of business consultants owe their professional existence to SAP and help keep SAP the market leader. | | | |CIO loyalty | |Many CIO’s3 have invested millions of dollars in SAP and have staked their careers on its continued success. | | |Partnership with IBM | |IBM is probably one of the largest resellers of SAP software, on top of DB2 databases. | | | |Partnership with Microsoft | |Although SAP has ambitions in the SMB space in which Microsoft sells its own applications, a marriage of convenience results | |in a lot of Microsoft Office-to-SAP enterprise application work. | | |Open source | |Although SAP would balk at the idea of open-source application software, it provides tons of resources for the development of | |open-sou rce infrastructure software—making more money available for SAP software. | | |Business Process Integration | |Years of work in this area have resulted in a depth of expertise that is difficult to replicate. | | | |Global Footprint | |SAP has extended its enterprise application customer base around the world. | | |German Engineering | |Although it is sometimes seen as overly rigid, a reputation for attention to detail works in SAPs overall favor. | | | |Vertical market penetration | |Compared with Oracle, SAP has had more time to gain expertise across a broader array of industries. A recent Forrester research paper[4] found that Oracle has a strong middleware platform and better support of open standard and as such it is the right choice for customers who rely heavily on custom development in conjunction with packaged applications. The reporters Wang and Rymer asserted that companies in the high-tech manufacturing market segment would likely be better off with Oracle while co mpanies in the pharmaceutical and utilities industries would be more likely to choose SAP.In the light of this report my choice between theses systems will be based on the targeted market segment, in other words I will select the vendor that best suit my business activity. So therefore, I will select Oracle enterprise application if my company focuses on high-tech or with heavy reliability on custom development in conjunction with packaged applications. My choice in the other case will be to go for SAP if my business is found in the utilities industries or pharmaceutics. Making these choices will surely enable great customers satisfaction since they provide employees with the best equipments to serve these customers.Question3 Week 4 Lecture summary relating to: Data base models A data base model is a theory or specification describing how a data base is structured and used . several models have been suggested: The Hierarchal model is organized in to a tree like structure aiming to k eep data in an organized manner. This structure allows one relationship between two types of data i. e the parent child relationship, the child may have only one parent but the parent can have many children’s. The Network model organizes data using two fundamental records and sets.In other words the network model allows a many to many relationship meaning that the program maintains a current position and navigates fron one record to another by following relationships in which the record participates records can also be located b supplying key values. ( we have seen that most data bases used on man frame and minicomputer are based on the network or the hierarchal model. Relational model 3 key terms are widely used in the relational data base model these are relations , attributes and domain. A relation is theh colum and rows the named colums of the relations are called attributes and the domain is the set of values.The relational model was introduced as a way to make data base management system more independent. The structure of the relational model is a table where rows and columns of the tables are related. Database Development Entity modeling Entity relationship diagrams and entity relationship model illustrate the correlation and its nature between entities. The entities identifies the needs of the business and holds information of it all, with this method the relationship may be one to one or one to many. There are diverse benefits to the entity relationship modeling as it gives a specified picture of the current and requested system data.Normalization Normalization is the procedure of removing duplication of data. Normalization is also the process of verifying by making sure that there are no problems when updating the database and the operations on the various relations will not lead to conflicting and incorrect data. Part 2 Question1 (iii) What is the role of entity-relationship diagram and Normalization in database? Normalization and ERM are use ful techniques for data management because normalization is the process of organizing data to minimize duplication, it usally divides a database into two or more tables defining relationships between the tables.The objective of normalization is to isolate data so that additions, deletions, and modifications of a field can be made in just one table and then spread through the rest of the data base via the defined relationships. I. e the customers number is related to its matching customers name and matching customer order. Therefore ERM and Normalization techniques ensure that data is well organized so that when updating some data you face no duplications or error. Data modeling is the process of creating a logical representation of the structure of a data base because it provides a unified view of data which is independent of any model.