Before you start

About this series

This tutorial series, Get started with Informix Warehouse Feature, introduces you to the highlights and capabilities of the new client and server software tools available for you in the Informix Warehouse option. These tools enable you to create and deploy a project for modeling the databases in your Informix data warehousing platform and automating the data transformation and movement processes to easily acquire and integrate data from different sources into your Informix warehouse.

The tutorials in this series are organized following this line of deployment: First, you will use the client component of the Informix Warehouse software — the Design Studio — to create the data warehouse (DW) project around Informix and build the data models for source and target databases. Then, you will continue using Design Studio to create and test the jobs for extracting, loading, and transforming (ELT) data from various sources (typically, OLTP databases and external files) into the target warehouse repository on Informix. Finally, the series illustrates the use of the server components in the Informix Warehouse — the Administration Console and SQW services — to manage and monitor resources associated to your warehouse, including the ELT jobs you programmed before in Design Studio.

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About this tutorial

This tutorial is the first part of the Get started with Informix Warehouse Feature series. Get an introduction to the Informix Warehouse option, and learn more about its components and architecture. Review some of the main concepts in data warehousing, and put the Informix Warehouse Feature in context in a data warehousing solution using Informix. Set up and follow an imaginary business scenario that will run the entire tutorial series, where the Informix Warehouse Feature is used to design and populate the new warehouse repository. Finally, start using the Informix Warehouse: Get your hands on the Design Studio tool to create a new DW/ELT project, define the connections to your data sources and targets, create the physical data models for those databases using two different methods, visualize the entity-relationship (ER) diagrams of these models, and deploy the model for your target warehouse in the physical database.

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Objectives

When you have completed this tutorial, you will:

• Know the components and architecture of a solution involving Informix Warehouse
• Be familiar with the functionality of the components in the software
• Be familiar with Informix Warehouse's Design Studio — the client component of Informix Warehouse — to create a new DW/ELT project, connect to the data sources, and design the data models of the source and target (the warehouse) databases involved

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Prerequisites

This tutorial is written based on an Informix Dynamic Server and Informix Warehouse installation on a Windows® platform. However, most of the information in this tutorial applies in the context of a solution on UNIX® or Linux® too. The tutorial is written for Informix database users who are familiar with and have working knowledge of Informix tools such as dbaccess, SQL language and scripts, Windows environments, and Eclipse-based IDE/GUI tools. You should also have skills and experience in relational database design, ER models, data warehousing, and ETL tools.

This tutorial assumes that you have:

• Informix Warehouse Feature Client installed. For more information about how to install the product, please refer to the Resources section.
• Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11.50.xC3 or later installed and a basic working knowledge of IDS. For download information, please refer to the Resources section.

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System requirements

To run the examples in this tutorial, you need a system with at least the Informix Warehouse Feature client installed and an Informix Dynamic Server installed, with a database server instance up and running (local or remote).

This tutorial works on a fictional and simplified example of a business scenario in the Retail industry. You will design and deploy an Informix data mart for Sales and Cost analysis for the retail company Sports Stores. The new warehouse repository will combine and aggregate data from one Informix operational database and a few external files.

You will use the sample databases stores_demo as the source operational (OLTP) system, and sales_demo as the target warehouse (OLAP) system. To create the databases, follow these steps (this tutorial assumes you run these commands as user admin, which will be the schema under which the tables will be defined):

1. Drop any databases called stores_demo and sales_demo, if they already exist.
   
   
2. Create and populate the sample stores_demo database with the logging option. The dbaccessdemo script can be found in $INFORMIXDIR/bin:

   dbaccessdemo -log

   
   
3. Create an empty sales_demo database with the logging option:

   dbaccess – - > create database sales_demo with log ;

   
   

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Introduction to Informix Warehouse Feature
• Data warehousing – An overview
• Business scenario
• Getting started with the Informix Warehouse Client
• Creating physical data model from reverse engineering
• Creating physical data model from a template
• Conclusion
• Resources
• About the authors

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