The first time you sign into developerWorks, a profile is created for you. Select information in your profile (name, country/region, and company) is displayed to the public and will accompany any content you post. You may update your IBM account at any time.

All information submitted is secure.

The first time you sign in to developerWorks, a profile is created for you, so you need to choose a display name. Your display name accompanies the content you post on developerworks.

Please choose a display name between 3-31 characters. Your display name must be unique in the developerWorks community and should not be your email address for privacy reasons.

All information submitted is secure.

My developerWorks:

My notifications:

Sign out

Select a language:

Designing an integration landscape with IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools and Information Server, Part 1: Planning an integration landscape

IBM InfoSphere Blueprint Director

Harald Smith (smithha@us.ibm.com), Software Architect, IBM

With nearly 30 years in IT and software development, Harald Smith has focused on the design and delivery of information integration and information quality solutions and products, including methods and best practices.

Summary: This tutorial is an introduction to the use of IBM® InfoSphere® Blueprint Director, in the context of a project, to depict the target vision (or landscape) for the final solution and to provide guidance for subsequent project tasks. It is intended as the first of a series focused on a specific, common information integration scenario: the update of a Data Warehouse-Business Intelligence (DW-BI) information process.

View more content in this series

Date: 02 Feb 2012
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (4678 KB | 91 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 17413 views
Comments:

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\.

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.

Figure 1. Enterprise Architect Archie Aston
Picture of Archie

InfoSphere Blueprint Director templates

You can use templates to create a blueprint based on a standard set of best practices. The template provides a picture of a reference architecture associated with specific methods and best practices to help guide team members through the process of creating a new blueprint.

"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."

Comments

static.content.url=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/js/artrating/

SITE_ID=1

Zone=Information Management

ArticleID=790281

TutorialTitle=Designing an integration landscape with IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools and Information Server, Part 1: Planning an integration landscape

publish-date=02022012

author1-email=smithha@us.ibm.com

author1-email-cc=