Building a Planning Analytics “Information Front Porch”

 

Exchanging Information

 

Most enterprise PLANNING ANLAYTICS applications will have bidirectional exchanges of information with external systems and sources.

With PLANNING ANLAYTICS’s TurboIntegrator, you can consume files of data and even connect directly to (supported) data sources to load information directly into PLANNING ANLAYTICS objects at scheduled times or “on demand”.

An alternative to using this “direct route” is using a method sometimes referred to as “staging” information.

Information staging is the idea of storing pools of information as files in a defined storage area, or in compiled relational database views and then allowing PLANNING ANLAYTICS to consume the information as needed. (PLANNING ANLAYTICS can also stage information of its own, in specific cubes or dimensions, to be consumed by external system using this same method). Conceptually, you can think of this staging area is the “front porch” of your planning analytics application, where information is “greeted” and if required, “scrubbed” or otherwise “readied” and stored for use within the PLANNING ANLAYTICS application.

Advantages

Some advantages of establishing an information front porch for your planning analytics application include:

  • Teams or individuals other than the PLANNING ANLAYTICS team can own the creation and support of the processes that generate the information pools. This most likely will be the enterprise ETL team or those experts in the source information system (perhaps a data warehouse).
  • The PLANNING ANLAYTICS server and the external system remain “detached” from data sources. This reduces any possibility of one system impacting performance on the other.
  • Information is available for reloading into PLANNING ANLAYTICS if required.
  • In some instances, information imports from files or compiled relational views can be faster than directly “linking” between PLANNING ANLAYTICS and a source system.
  • Scripts to handle the information imported from files will usually have “simple logic” since the information can be “transformed” into the specific format needed by PLANNING ANLAYTICS by the ETL process.
  • Quality assurance is somewhat easier since the information files can be reconciled to the source system and PLANNING ANLAYTICS using user-friendly tools such as MS Excel.
  • There is the possibility that the staging areas and information can be used by other systems so rather than having multiple systems each query for the same information the information is created once and reused.

Of course, consideration will need to be given for things like:

  • Permissions – which users and processes will have access to the staging area and information?
  • Archival and retrieval – how long will you retain the information? Will you archive information when it stales, or just delete it? If you archive it, will you need to and be able to retrieve it?
  • Disk space requirements – how much space will be required to hold the information? What about going forward as volume and activity change?
  • Contention – is it a possibility that systems that consume the information – for example PLANNING ANLAYTICS – will attempt to access the information during a time that the ETL process is updating the staging area?

In many PLANNING ANLAYTICS implementations, the information staging area (or “front porch”) will reside on the same machine as the PLANNING ANLAYTICS server. In this environment,  you will need to consider security as well as perhaps adjust your space requirements accordingly.

PLANNING ANLAYTICS server machines will need reserved space for:

  • PLANNING ANLAYTICS database files,
  • PLANNING ANLAYTICS transaction and message logging,
  • Physical server machine logging,
  • Temporary space for certain PLANNING ANLAYTICS features such “sandboxing”,
  • Information staging and
  • History or archival storage

Conclusion

No matter the size or complexity of your Planning Analytics application, a well-planned information “front porch” can most likely improve your overall solutions maintainability, performance as well as increase the return on your investment.