DB2 Data Warehouse helps book dealers understand the market

As an annual sales of 147 million pieces of printed materials, audio-video and CD products, there are 48,000 million retail outlets and library book publishers around the world, target marketing is essential. Ingram Book Company's DB2-based Data Warehouse integrates data from several operating systems, allowing sales, marketing, and logistics staff to cross-reference customer and product data. This is vital for developing market strategies, improving sales responses and managing inventory efficiently.

"A visual repository is a wonderful tool because it allows you to quickly process the data market. "-- GregShinn, data management manager of Ingram

No matter which industry you choose, you can obtain information in a timely manner to form a competitive advantage. Before Ingram established its data warehouse in 1995. It takes three to five days for a response to be required by a common message. The data warehouse can give an answer within several seconds.

From data warehouse to data market

Ingram's data warehouse-including several big DB2/MVS tables-contains about 30 GB of data, which is expected to reach 1997 GB by 100. In the first phase of implementation in 1995, Ingram used IBM's VisualWarehouse to extract data warehouse Subsets and produced a data market on an OS/2 server. The DB2-based data market provides services for the Ingram library services (ILS) and retail service company business organizations. ILS uses data warehouses for market research to develop sales and marketing plans. RSI tracks sales from year to day and month to day and other information about the retail market.

Application

Market research, sales and marketing plans, and tracking sales data

Software

One of the reasons why VisualWarehouse, DB2forMVS, DB2forOS/2, DataPropagatorRelational, DataJoiner, and DataGuideIngram start to extract data centers from the company's data warehouse, it is a way for users to access data during routine maintenance on the host. In addition, the downloading of data to the data marketplace makes it possible for the IS group to redesign the data warehouse without interfering with users or forcing them to switch to the distributed operating system to obtain the required data.

"VisualWarehouse is a wonderful tool because it allows you to quickly dispose of the data center," says GregShinn, data management manager. His team is working on a data warehouse for Ingram. The company's blueprint for the data market is to be configured based on user needs and business types. For example, RSI and ILS provide services for readers and use a data market. While the book product department is oriented to publishers, It accesses another data center.

RSI and ILS use Microsoft Access to access their data centers. Other business groups prefer CognosInmpromptu and PowerPlay. The company also plans to use a Web browser as the front-end interface for users to access the data center, so that users can access the data center through the company's internal internet or WWW.

To maintain the company's strategy of using WindowsNT as an enterprise's computing platform, Ingram is transitioning IBMPentium320OS/2 servers to WindowsNT servers. The new data center server has 20 GB of hard disk space-almost twice that of the previous server-to save some space for future growth.

Replication keeps the company synchronized

Ingram uses DataPropagatorRelational-IBM data replication tool to open up the DB2/MVS warehouse from its operating system. VisualWarehouse opens up a data center. By combining DataPropagatorRelational with another IBM tool DataJoiner, Ingram can open up non-DB2 databases based on Microsoft sqlserver.

The commercial data of Ingram is stored in a central data warehouse. Users can now make better decisions because they can trust data integrity. Direct access to this information makes it easier for them to perform incremental analysis through a series of queries. If three or four queries take two or three weeks, incremental analysis is empty. With data warehouses, you can view data in multiple ways and obtain the required information within several minutes.

According to Shinn, members of the RSI group can save thousands of US dollars a month, because data warehouses give them a better and more timely understanding of the business.

Lessons learned

Shinn claims that Ingram is a pioneer in data warehouses. "As early as 1989," he recalled, "we began to map our operating system to an information system called sales and marketing, developed by Ingress. In 1993, we migrated the system from DB2 to MVS. Then I saw an article about the data warehouse to realize that we have been doing this. "

After two years of work with IBM and VisualWarehouse, Ingram has some lessons worth learning from data warehouse beginners. "The first is that you really need to look at your metadata, and from the very beginning, you need a toolset to help you deal with metadata information. In Ingram, we use ibmuuide to process metadata. "Shinn said that policuide is essential because users are not always clear about the information they obtain, and users in different departments may have different interpretations of the data. The metadata dictionary provides a clear definition of each type of data, giving everyone greater confidence in making business decisions.

Ingram is moving further towards metadata, which is included in employee training programs. "When new employees write reports, the metadata dictionary gives them a clearer understanding of the business situation," Shinn says. "In fact, we train everyone. "

Before implementation of DataGuide, Ingram has examined other metadata processing methods, including a warehouse tool. The reason for rejection is that it cannot be implemented in a timely manner, and many of the functions provided by Ingram are not required.

User first

Another experience that Ingram has learned is that users are the main drivers of data warehouse projects. "We tried to predict users' needs," Shinn said. "But we found that you really need to talk to them. You need to create a desired model and keep it in the ring. "

Ingram is also aware of the importance or benefits of working closely with data management partners. According to executive cothern, vice president of Ingram applications, Ingram chose IBM as its data warehouse Vendor Based on IBM's continuity, experience, interoperability, and product quality and support. As early as 1995, data warehouse technology was still in its infancy, and Ingram had already worked with IBM developers in data warehouse planning and design. When the Ingram team told IBM developers that they needed to integrate DataPropagatorRelational with VisualWarehouse, IBM listened. GregShinn emphasizes that such technical requirements are clearly driven by key business needs-to provide timely information, sales and logistics personnel for Ingram marketing.

Because data warehouse efforts require long-term cooperation between many departments of the company, and the ROI is hard to determine, Ingram finds that it is important for the high-level management class outside of MIS to sponsor data warehouse projects. "So far, we do not need to calculate a comprehensive ROI for a data warehouse," said Dr. Cohen. "Value is visible. "

Whether the value of the data warehouse is recognized by the non-MIS Manager. GregShinn and his staff are very confident about this. "I think IBM's efforts at VisualWarehouse are very exciting," Shinn said.