Information Aggregation

The Information Aggregation business pattern is also known as User-to-Data, and it exists in e-business solutions that allow users to access and manipulate data that is aggregated from multiple sources. This Business pattern captures the process of taking large volumes of data, text, images, video, and so on, and using various user-controlled tools to extract useful information from them.

• Strategy and Planning
  • Senior Management Decisions
  • Business Strategy Planning
  • Transaction Summary and Tracking
  • Statistical Analysis
• Product Analysis
  • Product Competitiveness Analysis
  • Brand Management
• Marketing Analysis
  • Identify markets
  • Identify prospective customers
  • Contact customers
  • Manage the marketing process
• Sales Management
  • Follow through on marketing leads
  • Manage the sales process
  • Identify cross-selling opportunitiesPaying bills online
• Service Management
  • Customer Service Analysis
  • Supplier Management
  • Business Support Services
• Internal Process Management
  • Historial details summary
  • Fraud Detection
  • Risk Management

If you're not yet sure that your business problem can be solved by the functionality enabled through an Information Aggregation solution design, the Information Aggregation general guidelines page provides additional information on choosing this Business pattern. Business and IT drivers, the e-business context appropriate for this solution type, and additional solution details are discussed here.

If you believe the Information Aggregation pattern can solve your e-business problem, but are not familiar with the basic concepts of business intelligence, review the Fundamental Information Aggregation concepts page.

If you've determined that the Information Aggregation business pattern can provide an appropriate solution design for your business need, the next step is to select an Application pattern. The Information Aggregation business pattern can be implemented using the base Application pattern or its two variations, providing solution flexibility so that the determined pattern can address the specific needs of the business process being automated. If your choice indicates the need for a derived data store (e.g. data warehouse, data mart etc) or index you will later probably want to review the Application Integration::Data Integration application patterns.

• Patterns for e-business naming conventions

• Updated Information Aggregation pattern

  Updated: 04-04-2006
  Added new product mappings to the User Information Access application pattern.

• New Information Aggregation pattern hierarchy

  Updated: 12-14-2004
  The Information Aggregation pattern hierarchy has been updated on the Patterns for e-business Web site.

• Feasibility:
  This material will help you determine the high-level shape of a Self-Service system, and ensure your approach looks similar to other successful sites. Re-use of prior approaches can be an effective way to begin most major projects. Obviously, modifications will be needed for any unique requirements of a given site. This pattern provides a drill-down from high-level architecture to lower-level designs and guidance.

• Risk:
  Basing new projects on prior designs and ideas helps to lower the risk of failure. Creating or inventing designs for each project tends to result in a lower success rate. Frequently, projects begun "from scratch" simply do not work and have major exposures in such areas as security, performance, availability, undefined requirements, and cost over-run.

• Cost-benefit:
  By starting with reasonably complete architectures you save considerable development time and obtain assurance that the end solution will have a much higher chance of success. Actual savings will vary, but project teams have realized a 10% to 50% reduction of work effort in their design and architecture phases alone.