Oracle & Motorola distributed Datawarehouse

  Network World via Individual Inc. : Tempe, Ariz.

  A division of Motorola, Inc. here has built a data warehouse that provides the benefits of both distributed data marts and a centralized data store.

  The warehouse, which contains product and financial information, lets about 400 users analyze the efficiency of several manufacturing facilities and better manage order fulfillment.

  The contents of the data warehouse are divided into nine Oracle Corp. database servers, with information most often accessed by end users kept on the servers closest to them.

  Key to the warehouse is a centrally updated repository that contains information about what data exists and where it is housed. The metadata repository is accessible locally by any end user, and can be used to locate and access information stored in the nine databases.

  ``As a result of the warehouse, we are able to measure the performance of our manufacturing plants in a consistent way,'' said Barbara Martensen, vice president and director of information systems for the data warehouse sector at Motorola. ``We're also using [the warehouse] to improve quality and deliver products in a more timely way.''

  The data warehouse sites, spread across the U.S., Europe and Tokyo, are connected via a mix of T-1, 512K bit/sec and 256K bit/sec lines.

  The warehouse is based on a global database format that gives it a common look and feel. End users also have access to a library of queries and formatted reports.

  Motorola loads about 2G bytes of data from legacy mainframes and minicomputers into the warehouse each day. At the end of each month, about 20G bytes of additional data is loaded, then the distributed database servers are updated.

  When end users locate information through the metadata repository, the data is replicated either to their desktops via File Transfer Protocol, electronic mail or HTML, or to their local data warehouse node.

  Because data is organized so that most of the information users want is on their local warehouse database, the warehouse has not generated a lot of extra traffic on the company's backbone net, Martensen said.

  In addition, the administrators monitor queries using custom-developed software and will move data to a user's local data warehouse if it is being accessed frequently, she said.

[04-02-96 at 16:03 EST, Copyright 1996, Network World, File: x0402464.3dn]

  Copyright (c) 1996 by INDIVIDUAL, Inc. All rights reserved. Received on Sun May 05 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST