Session B: Information Systems and Data Warehouse |
Jean-François DESNOS: A National Data Warehouse Project for French Universities |
The project schedule includes the following steps:
2.1 Software specifications: three "scenarios" or classes of indicators have been defined by a working committee, including university presidents, general secretaries, statisticians and information technology managers from nine institutions. The specifications were validated in march 2000.
2.2 Building of a meta-dictionary. A data warehouse meta-dictionary describes the pieces of data extracted from source databases, how the information is treated, and then transfers to the target. This very important step of DWH design was validated by the steering committee in august 2000.
2.3 The development process itself is comprised of:
2.3.1 The target database design. As most of the sources are Oracle 7 based databases, we chose an Oracle 8i standard relational technology.
2.3.2 Programming consists of two kinds of procedures:
- The Extraction, Transformation and Loading, (ETL), from sources to target procedure. To ensure good productivity and maintenance of the software, we chose to use "Data Stage Tool," from Informix, rather than a full in-house software development. After a two-month comparative study, Data Stage has been selected, versus Genio from Hummingbird. We also looked at Oracle Warehouse Builder, and Decision Base from Computer Associates, and Sunopsis.
- Business Objects R5 for target extractions, data analysis (slice and dice), and presentation.
2.4 Delivery of the first release to pilot sites in November 2000.
The five pilot universities are Jules Verne, (Amiens), P. et M. Curie, (Paris), Louis Pasteur, (Strasbourg), Rennes 1, and Versailles.
Four of them: Amiens, Rennes, Strasbourg, and Versailles, use the same student, (Apogée), financial, (Nabuco), staff (Harpège), and payroll (Paye) systems. Major sources thus become the same, but of course, other locally built sources exist.
Paris does not run Apogée, and also had the ETL tool, Genio, before the project began. This pilot institution has therefore to adapt ETL procedures to their student source, and to their ETL tool.
A number of technical documents have been delivered with the software:
2.5 In 2001, a technical meeting is scheduled about every month in Paris with the pilot teams. The steering committee meets every two months.
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