| Can you collect data only from a DWH or also from operational systems e.g. ERP, CRM? |
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Sterna BPS easily connects to virtually any data source, be it OLAP cubes, file-based structures such as XML, ASCII files or excel spreadsheets, operational systems such as ERP and CRM, or any ODBC or OLE DB-compliant database, such as SQL Server, Oracle E-Business Suite, DB2. |
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Should operational data be aggregated or transformed in order to be pulled into Sterna BPS? |
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Not at all.
Traditional business analytics solutions use disk-based storage mechanisms, which typically require many hours to process large volumes of data. In order to meet reasonable response times, they must pre-aggregate data and offer various pre-defined reports.
Sterna BPS server loads raw operational data into memory whilemaintaining the data separately from the mathematical calculations. It performs calculations only upon user request, providing the most reliable, up-to-date and dynamic information, in a fraction of the time compared to traditional business analytics solutions. |
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Is there a limit to the volume of data that Sterna BPS can handle today? |
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Sterna BPS performs all calculations in real time, utilzing 64bit processors, scaling to tera bytes of data by load balancing across servers in a server farm. |
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What is the difference between storing data on disk and storing in memory using Sterna BPS?
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Sterna BPS server bypasses the need to aggregate data and calculates the requested information on the fly. It also has a unique built-in time management and conversion mechanisms. The combination of these features results in a massive reduction of data volume, in the order of 1000 to 1. The magnitude of this reduction is very much implementation specific, and depends on the data structure and the timeframe loaded into memory. In general, the longer timeframe stored, the bigger the difference in data volume. |
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We don’t need real-time data because we look at reports once a month. What’s the advantage of real time update?
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Sterna BPS is not a reporting tool. Rather, it allows managers to drive their Business Communities to their company's goals, ultimately maximizing profits for the organization, while accounting for changes in the dynamic business environment at all times.
Enterprise data originates from various systems and sources, such as ERP, Data Warehouses, Excel spreadsheets, external web sites storing currency exchange rates, commodity prices, and more. These sources are updated at different time intervals; some daily, some weekly, others intra-day. Sterna BPS reflects your current business position at all times, enabling managers to take well-informed action relative to the current business environment. |
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| How do you extract data from source systems? |
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Data is extracted using flexible collectors, into Sterna BPS Business Matrices. This process is completely modular, meaning that changing the data source does not affect the way data is represented in-memory, so you can plug in and out data sources as you wish, with minimal effort. The Collectors are capable of handling all common types of data sources e.g. RDBMS, OLAP, ODBC, XML, Web pages, MS-Excel, formatted text files, and many more. The Collectors require a one-time set-up during which they are connected to their data sources, the upload process is scheduled and the content is mapped into Sterna business matrices.
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Can you extract only the deltas from the last upload? |
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Yes. Sterna BPS can load deltas from source systems, thus improving system performance and reducing processing burden of IT resources. |
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What happens if one of the loaders/ collectors is out of order? |
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Sterna BPS loaders are autonomous; therefore a failure in one does not affect the others. The Sterna BPS administration tool points out to the exact source that is out of date and enables scheduled and manual source-update retries. In case data from a specific source is not collected into Sterna BPS, the customer can choose whether to take the “all or nothing” approach, or to use data from the last update of that specific source, in which case a notification is presented when analyzing business views that take into account information from that source. |
