Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition

26 Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition

2.2.1 InfoSphere Warehouse core architecture

At the center of the InfoSphere Warehouse lies the DB2 relational database

engine, which provides not only a repository for user data, but also the

infrastructure to support the many functional operations performed on the data.

Together with the InfoSphere Warehouse application hosted within a

WebSphere Application Server, these elements combine to form the runtime

component of an InfoSphere warehouse solution.

A number of client products, Data Studio, Design Studio, and web browser,

provide the development tools and administration components required in the

support of these runtime elements. Figure 2-1 shows the complete functional

component architecture of InfoSphere Warehouse.

Figure 2-1 Functional component architecture of InfoSphere Warehouse

Application Server Components

WebSphere Application Server

Administration Console

SQW Warehouse Tool

Cubing Services

Data Server Components

DB2 Enterprise Server

Workload Manager

Data Mining

Client

Components

Design Studio

and

Web Browser

Chapter 2. Overview of InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition 27

The instance of the DB2 relational database at the core of the data warehouse

can be configured either as a single or multiple partitioned database, and

installed on a single hardware server or on numerous hardware servers, as

detailed in 2.3.1, “Scenarios for implementing InfoSphere Warehouse core

products” on page 60.

This DB2 flexibility results in significant power being available to the main

repository of your warehouse data, often called the

execution database. In

addition to the main data repository and execution database, the same DB2

instance hosts two additional databases. These much smaller databases contain

the metadata required by both the InfoSphere Warehouse runtime and the

Cognos BI server applications. Figure 2-2 details the DB2 instance and the

default application databases.

Figure 2-2 Databases contained within the DB2 instance

The DDSDB metadata database holds information relating to the InfoSphere

Warehouse runtime component including such details as:

򐂰 Database connection and JDBC drivers

򐂰 SQL Warehousing (SQW) applications, including control flow, job variables,

and system resources

򐂰 Scheduling details of the SQW jobs

򐂰 The progress of SQW job instances and their statistics, time taken to execute,

completed successfully or not, and logs

Name change: In InfoSphere Warehouse 10.0, the metadata database is

called DDSDB. In earlier versions of InfoSphere Warehouse, the metadata

database was known as SQWCTRL.

DB2 Instance

DB2 Customer / Execution

Database

Cognos BI

Metadata repository

'COGNODB'

InfoSphere Warehouse

Metadata repository

'DDSDB'

28 Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition

The COGNODB metadata database contains the information needed by the

Cognos BI server and Cognos Frameworks. This includes such items as the

reports created, data source connections, and the modelling information used

within Cognos Frameworks.

There should never be a reason for direct connection to either of these metadata

databases by users or administrators, with only the respective runtime

applications requiring to make connections to access the data within. With this in

mind, both products supply tools for the administration of these metadata

databases because without them, the runtime element of InfoSphere Warehouse

and the Cognos BI server will not function.

Storing important business data is not the only function that DB2 has to perform.

A major part of any data warehouse is the requirement to perform ETL processes

upon the contained data. It is because of this requirement that the full power,

performance, and functionality of DB2 can be applied.

The second major component of InfoSphere Data Warehouse is the runtime

application component. This enterprise Java application performs a number of

important functions within the complete solution, including:

򐂰 The administration console for the InfoSphere Warehouse solution

򐂰 Storing, executing, and managing the ETL processes

򐂰 Storing and managing the cubing services

򐂰 Storing and managing the data mining services

Figure 2-3 shows the InfoSphere Warehouse Administration Console.

Figure 2-3 InfoSphere Warehouse Administration Console