Name: Saylee Mahesh Naik
IT-432
Experiment No. 1
Aim: Study of the data warehousing software
1. Informatics
2. SAP
3. SAS
4. Oracle Data warehouse building
Theory:
1. Informatics
Informatics software is software which has been designed to help
people manage information. This type of software is usually geared
towards a specific application of informatics, such as medical
informatics. Numerous software companies make informatics software
and provide support, including regular updates with new material and
fixes for problems which have been identified by users, for their
products. For very specific applications, people may order customized
software products which have been designed for a particular system or
need. The field of informatics is very broad. It includes the
development of methods to store and retrieve information, along with
tools to process and analyze that information so that it is useful.
Informatics can be used in a number of scientific environments to
organize data and express it in meaningful ways. It can also be utilized
to keep track of data in other settings, ranging from libraries to college
admissions departments Good informatics software is flexible and
powerful. It provides a number of ways for users to organize
information so that it can be kept in a way which makes sense for the
application, and it has the power to retrieve information in a variety of
ways as well. The software is typically designed to be accessible for
multiple users, so that many people can access information through
the same software. For example, in a scientific laboratory, researchers
would share data through their informatics software, and the software
would allow people to do everything from entering raw data to
performing statistical analysis. Data management is an increasingly
challenging and complex field. Successful software products are
usually updated on a regular basis to keep up with developments in
informatics and to address evolving needs. Specialized informatics
software for applications such as medical records management,
business management, laboratory science, and scientific research is
available. Some companies also sell expansions for their products,
allowing users to start with a basic software suite and customize it for
their needs.
2. SAP
SAP is an acronym for System Applications and Products in Data Processing.
A company that develops software which allows businesses to track
customer and business interactions. SAP is well-known for its Enterprise
Resource Management (ERM) and data management programs. The original
SAP idea was to provide customers with the ability to interact with a common
corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications. Gradually,
the applications have been assembled and today many corporations,
including IBM and Microsoft, are using SAP products to run their own
businesses. SAP applications, built around their latest R/3 system, provide
the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting, production
operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. The R/
3 system runs on a number of platforms including Windows 2000 and uses
the client/server model. The latest version of R/3 includes a comprehensive
Internet-enabled package.
3. SAS
SAS is an acronym for Statistical Analysis System is an integrated system of
software products -provided by SAS institute inc. - that enables programmers
to perform:
• data entry, retrieval, management, and mining
• report writing and graphics
• statistical analysis
• business planning, forecasting, and decision support
• operations research and project management
• quality improvement
• applications development
• data warehousing (extract, transform, load)
• platform independent and remote computing
In addition, SAS has many business solutions that enable large-scale
software solutions for areas such as IT management, human resource
management, financial management, business intelligence, customer
relationship management. SAS is driven by SAS programs that define a
sequence of operations to be performed on data stored as tables.SAS
components expose their functionalities via application programming
interfaces, in the form of statements and procedures. A SAS program
comprises three major parts:
1. the DATA step
2. procedure steps (effectively, everything that is not enclosed in a DATA
step)
3. a macro language
The DATA step section of a SAS program, like other database-oriented
fourth-generation programming languages such as SQL or Focus, assumes a
default file structure, and automates the process of identifying files to the
operating system, opening the input file, reading the next record, opening
the output file, writing the next record, and closing the files. This allows the
user/programmer to concentrate on the details of working with the data
within each record, in effect working almost entirely within an implicit
program loop that runs for each record. All other tasks are accomplished by
procedures that operate on the data set (SAS' terminology for "table") as a
whole. Typical tasks include printing or performing statistical analysis, and
may just require the user/programmer to identify the data set. Procedures
are not restricted to only one behavior and thus allow extensive
customization, controlled by mini-languages defined within the procedures.
SAS also has an extensive SQL procedure, allowing SQL programmers to use
the system with little additional knowledge. There are macro programming
extensions that allow for rationalization of repetitive sections of the program.
Proper imperative and procedural programming constructs can be simulated
by use of the "open code" macros or the interactive matrix language SAS/IML
component. Macro code in a SAS program, if any, undergoes preprocessing.
At runtime, DATA steps are compiled and procedures are interpreted and run
in the sequence they appear in the SAS program. A SAS program requires
the SAS software to run.
4. Oracle Data Warehouse Building
Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) is an ETL tool produced by Oracle that
offers a graphical environment to build, manage and maintain data
integration processes in business intelligence systems. The primary use for
OWB is consolidation of heterogeneous data sources in data warehousing
and data migration from legacy systems. Further it offers capabilities for
relational, dimensional and metadata data modeling, data profiling, data
cleansing and data auditing. Whereas the core functionality is part of the
Oracle database since version 10gR2, some of the latter features are sold
separately as options. OWB uses a variant of Tcl over Java and PL/SQL called
OMB+.
Comparison of data warehouse software
1. Informatics
• Informatics software is software which has been designed to help
people to manage information.
• It includes the development of methods to store and retrieve
information, along with tools to process and analyze that
information so that it is useful.
2. SAS
• SAS enables programmers to perform data
entry, retrieval, management, and mining, report writing and graphics
statistical analysis, business planning, forecasting, and decision
support, operations research and project management ,quality
improvement, applications development, data warehousing (extract,
transform, load),platform independent and remote computing.
• SAS has many business solutions that enable large-scale software
solutions for areas such as IT management, human resource
management, financial management, business intelligence, customer
relationship management.
3. SAP
•A company that develops software which allows businesses to track
customer and business interactions. SAP is well-known for its
Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) and data management
programs.
•It provides customers with the ability to interact with a common
corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications.
4. Oracle Data Warehouse Software
• Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) is an ETL tool produced by Oracle
that offers a graphical environment to build, manage and maintain
data integration processes in business intelligence systems.
• The primary use for OWB is consolidation of heterogeneous data
sources in data warehousing and data migration from
legacy systems.
Conclusion: Thus we have studied the data warehouse softwares.
