Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition

Chapter 3. Scenario: Warehouse Live Demo Set 77

any number of the elements on the window to drill down to a more detailed

view of that element (that is, those not in any of the Loyalty programs).

We also can select the “Drill Through” option, which goes directly into a more

detailed report supporting the data contained in this chart on the dashboard

(Figure 3-6).

Figure 3-6 A detailed report presented after choosing to drill through from an overview report

8. Clicking the Back icon ( ) of the report returns the viewer to the previous

window.

So, as with the CEO of the retail company, we are able to view the details of the

three loyalty programs implemented by the company including membership

rates, the gross and net margins, and profits associated to client transactions.

3.3 Example architecture used in this book

In this section, we describe the architecture of the environment used to

demonstrate our examples throughout this book. Our environment used VMware

78 Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition

images, as is common for many demos and examples. In our lab environment,

we had three VMware images in an ESX server:

򐂰 System One

This “main” system VMware image is based on the standard IBM Smart

Analytics System 5710 that IBM offers as a method of purchasing a solution

for data warehousing that is ready for immediate use. This VMware image

makes a perfect starting base for those in need of a rapid implementation for

development and testing, or even as a small company solution.

The integrated solution for our lab included the following software:

– Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES) SP2 64-bit operating

system

– InfoSphere Warehouse Departmental Edition, 10.1

– DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows, Version 10.1

– Cognos10 BI 10.1.1.0 and Cognos Mobile 10.1

– WebSphere Application Sever 8.0.0.2

Our DB2 database had two database partitions in two physical nodes.

System One was the coordinate node of the partitioned DB2 database.

WebSphere Application Server hosted our InfoSphere Warehouse Instance.

This system was also the IBM Cognos 10 BI server. During the initial

configuration, we selected the option to install the “Cognos Live Demo”

example set. The Cognos Live Demo provides a preconfigured and populated

execution database containing a defined table and schema structure along

with a retail product and client data set.

This example set also contained a populated Cognos metadata database in

support of the already created Cognos reports. We used these reports in the

demonstration provided in 3.2, “Warehouse Live! Demo” on page 71 in

support of our scenario.

This system was configured with 5 GB of RAM and 1 processor.

򐂰 System Two

The second VMware image was also based on IBM Smart Analytics System

5710 with the same software installed as in System One. This was the

second DB2 database physical node. Both the InfoSphere warehouse and

Cognos BI servers were deactivated.

Note: When installing and configuring the Cognos Live Demo VMware

image, select the option Cogos Live Demo to include the demo database

and reports.

Chapter 3. Scenario: Warehouse Live Demo Set 79

This system was configured with 5 GB of RAM and 1 processor.

򐂰 System Three

This was a Windows-based VMware image that contained the IBM Optim

products including IBM Optim Performance Manager and Optim

Configuration Manager.

This system was configured with 4 GB of RAM and 1 processor.

IBM Optim tools also support Linux, AIX, and z/OS operating systems.

Figure 3-7 depicts our lab environment.

Figure 3-7 Lab environment

Because the majority of the IBM products offer Try and Buy licences, all the

examples contained within this book can be attempted by our readers.

ESX VMware Server

System One

SLES Linux

System Two

SLES Linux

System Three

Microsoft Windows

DB2

DB2

Data partition One

Data partition Two

DB2

Optim Metadata

Repository

DB2 Instance  spans two partitions

Cognos BI Server

Optim Performance Manager

Optim Configuration Manager

HTML

JDBC

Clients

Web Browsers

Web Browsers

Design Studio

WebSphere Application Server 

Hosting InfoSphere Warehouse

Application

HTML

HTML

HTML

80 Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition