Starting your information project with IBM InfoSphere Blueprint Director

Blueprint Director strengthens the alignment of business and IT by providing visualization of a desired information environment and its evolution through a collaborative environment. Using Blueprint Director, teams can collaborate on actionable information blueprints that connect the business vision for the information project with the corresponding business and technical artifacts. Blueprint Director guides the team to apply recommended practices based on incorporated reference architectures and methodology.

Objectives

In this tutorial, you will:

• Discover the Data Warehouse-Business Intelligence template and methods for InfoSphere Blueprint Director
• Manage the end-to-end project vision for updating the data warehouse project
• Link the blueprint to business and technical artifacts

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes the following:

• IBM InfoSphere Blueprint Director 2.0.1 is installed on your client workstation.
• IBM InfoSphere Information Server 8.7 is installed and available to you in your environment. Contact your Information Server administrator for specific details.
• The SCENARIO REFERENCE ASSETS (see Downloads) have been imported into your IBM InfoSphere Information Server environment. Contact your Information Server administrator for details. The steps required are included in Appendix A.
• The Sample_Warehouse_V1.bpt file has been downloaded and saved to a local directory, such as c:\Temp\.

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Scenario overview

In this tutorial, you will use InfoSphere Blueprint Director to govern your information project. Fictional Enterprise Architect Archie Aston provides context and added commentary.

"I'm Archie Aston, the enterprise architect responsible for our data warehousing projects. When we started developing a new project in the past, my project vision document was a pretty-looking picture that nobody followed or tracked. Since we started using blueprints, our vision stays connected with reality, and it allows us to collaboratively execute based on a methodical approach. The initial data warehouse project turned out to be a big success."

"Our new project," Aston continued, "is intended to update our Data Warehouse with our newly acquired business units — specifically the BANK2 acquisition and its associated data assets."

Refer to the Scenario Reference Guide (see Downloads) for a quick summary of the initiative.

"When we acquired BANK 2, we wanted to harmonize our infrastructure and rationalize across common information. Instead of drawing my vision on the whiteboard in the conference room, I started to use IBM InfoSphere Blueprint Director, turning the vision document into a more governed artifact. I want to walk you through the process of using Blueprint Director and its templates, and then show you how to customize it for our new project, establishing an updated enterprise landscape."

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Table of contents

• Starting your information project with IBM InfoSphere Blueprint Director
• Discovering the business-driven BI development template
• Updating the end-to-end project vision for our data warehouse project
• Step 1: Find and import existing blueprint
• Step 2: Add a new data store and sub-diagram to the blueprint
• Step 3: Connect the Data Store to relevant methods
• Step 4: Communicate changes to the blueprint for a new function
• Step 5: Create project milestones and associate elements with specific milestones
• Step 6: Set up connections to your IBM InfoSphere Information Server environment
• Step 7: View and connect the new Data Store to relevant glossary content and Information Server assets
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Setting up your Information Server content
• Downloads
• Resources
• About the author

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Local resources

• IBM Innovation Center - Austin, TX
• IBM Innovation Center - Chicago, IL
• IBM Innovation Center - Dallas, TX
• IBM Innovation Center - San Mateo, CA
• IBM Innovation Center - Waltham, MA
• Technical Briefings in North America

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