Sterling Business Intelligence ecosystem

The Business Intelligence ecosystem is described here:

  • Sterling source database

    This database is the source database from where the data is extracted, transformed, and loaded (ETL) into the Staging database using the configured ETL tool.

  • Staging database

    The database in which the incremental transaction data that is extracted, transformed, and loaded from the source is stored. The staging database is the source for the data mart database.

    Business Intelligence does not provide a staging database, however, if you have deployed a sharded environment, it is recommended that you create a staging database to consolidate the data.

  • Data mart database

    The data in this database is dimensionally modeled to be analytics friendly. The Business Intelligence reports are generated from this data by using IBM® Cognos® Report Studio and an appropriate ETL tool.

  • ETL tool

    An ETL tool is used to design and populate a target data warehouse. It facilitates the extraction, transformation, and loading of application-specific data from the source database into the target data warehouse. It helps you construct a source model that describes the rules for querying the source database.

    You can use your own ETL tool or use InfoSphere® DataStage® to create and execute custom ETL jobs. If you choose to use InfoSphere DataStage, the required licence is provided along with Sterling™ Order Management System.

  • Sterling Business Intelligence Content
    The Sterling Business Intelligence Content consists of analytics content files for your system. The Sterling Business Intelligence Content contains the following data:
    • Reports and files that are required for communication between the Cognos Analytics server and Business Intelligence application.
    • Metadata files that serve as the data mart model and the report specification.
  • IBM Cognos Analytics

    Cognos Analytics can be accessed from the Application Console or IBM Sterling Business Center. When a user launches Cognos Analytics from either of these applications, the user is automatically logged into Cognos Analytics using the IBM Sterling Order Management System log in credentials.