Operational Data Store [ODS]

Operational data is that data that pertains to customer transactions. Operational data is the prime resource of any business intelligence system.

Operational data is stored in separate databases, than the data warehouse used for business intelligence purposes. This is mostly to provide better performance for business intelligence applications accessing the data.

When assessing the needs for operational data storage - both for transactional systems and business intelligence applications, an Operational Data Assessment must be completed.

Operational Data Assessment

An Operational Data Assessment is an assessment of:

1. Current data volume and capability
2. Business needs for data
3. Future data store capability

This assessment is performed by examining current available data and completing interviews with business and technical personnel [separately].

Inteview Questions

Typical assessment interview questions may include:

1. What is your business process?
2. What information do you need to make your job easier?
3. Where is the data?
4. What stores of data are currently being used?
5. How do you use the data?
6. How do you like your current applications?

The answers are often in the form of what strategic and tactical business questions need to be answered.

Strategic Buiness Questions

Strategic answers may be in the form of a business question, such as:

1. What is sales information by customer and product on a monthly basis
2. How does it compare with the same time period last year?
3. What customers were the most profitable?
4. Who are my top 10 customers?
5. What products sell best in each region?
6. What products sell best bundled together?

Tactical Business Questions

Tactical answers involve lack of access to data, no data integration (they use spreadsheets) or software issues (functionality does not meet the business requirements).

Typcial tactical business questions include:

1. Is there an easier way to report or integrate financial data on a spreadsheet?
2. What is the current customer list?
3. How do I get the most current tactical data?
4. How many times have we interacted with a particular customer this week?

Operational Data Projects

ODS projects are large and complex. They involve:

1. Integration of corporate data
2. Data quality
3. Master data management (MDM)

Customer data integration (CDI) - special ETL software programs are used to extract, transform and load (ETL) data for several legacy systems. This software can integrate customer, product, facilities and human resources from many sources in real time, in some instances.

Creating a master store hub - like the ODS, MDM and CDI, software can create a master store (hub) of enterprise-ready integrated customer and/or product data.

Defintions

MDM is the integration of multiple sources of master data (employee, customer, product, cost centers, etc.) from the entire enterprise.

CDI specializes in customer data. MDM does not include transactions, just more dimensional data.

ODS - Operational data store that is constantly updated and does not contain history, unlike the data warehouse. It is used to integrate data for tactical purposes, such as reporting and provides functionality that cannot be achieved in source systems. This data includes customer, product and other integrated dimensions required by business as well as transactions.

DW - Data warehouse- the DW is historical, subject-oriented (customer, product, facilities, human resources, etc.), nonvolatile (not updated) and integrated, thus requiring data to be added at various daily or weekly intervals. The DW is the store of data used to propagate data into data marts. In most cases, analytical change affects the data mart, not the DW.

Case Study

Business Problem

A global corporation with financial difficulties, has multiple subsidiaries, and needs to create a store of data to integrate financials from multiple places around the world.

Business Requirements

Reporting requirements include:

• Tactical - especially during the budgeting and accounting periods
• Strategic - comparing financial information from one accounting period to another.

Solution

An architecture including an ODS and DW [with data marts].

Global financial data was extracted, transformed and loaded multiple times a day - ETL programs were written that handled any integration or quality issue.

Data flows and ETL programs were configured to support business intelligence applications.

An in-house MDM was written, rather than using MDM software.

Business Benefits

The ODS was used to reconcile global financial data, meeting both the strategic and tactical business requirements. This included cost center information, transactional data, budgeting data, customer data, vendor data, etc.

MDM and CDI software and methodologies are now an integrated part of the enterprise and BI processes.

Technical Benefits

The MDM is flexible and continues to grow and enhance the corporation's assets by providing a source for business intelligence.

The ODS provides a viable means of integration of transactional data.

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