Data Warehousing for the

Future @ CQU
Ken Diefenbach
Acting Associate Director
Corporate Information Systems
Information Technology Division

.
05/29/1622/07/2004
05/29/1622/07/2004

Presentation Sequence
Some Thanks
Setting the Scene
CQU itself
BIG Guys

The Need Perceived

The Journey to the Warehouse Begins
Speedbumps Unlimited

The Warehouse Journey

Current State of Play
Future Directions
Questions / Comments
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Setting the Scene

Central Queensland University
Geographically diverse and
getting diverser
16K EFTSL, 21K students
1k+ staff
2004 Budget ~ 120M
Major corporate systems:
PeopleSoft Financials & Higher
Education
Concept HRMS

Usual plethora of feral systems

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Setting the Scene

Business Intelligence Group

(Think BIG)
3 members, 80+ years IT experience
Impromptu / PowerPlay / IWR
Site licenses for Impromptu & PowerPlay client software
1500+ web searchable reports

Moi

15 years + COGNOS tools

VCs Excel award 2001 (largely for Impromptu access to
PeopleSoft Student data)
Once again Member of International HEUG Reporting & Analysis
Product and Advisory Group

Prone to talk too much and too fast

Please tell me if its happening again!

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What is a Data Warehouse?

NOT a copy of the transaction data base
on a separate server
A repository where information from
multiple sources is restructured and stored
in a format more suitable for analysis and
reporting
CQU is adopting the Warehouse Gospel a
la Ralph Kimball
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A Useful Analogy
Reporting from
Production is like
counting screws on a
rapidly moving assembly
line
The ODS is like counting
screws on a stopped
assembly line
In a warehouse, we count
the screws in a single box
called screws
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The Need Perceived

Impromptu catalog and reports very successful
No cross application reports, some reports impossible to
write
Use of dynamic / smart hot files widespread to overcome
the length of navigation required
Created an proof of concept ODS with assistance from
Oracle DBA guru turned academic (beware the dark
side)
Copy of subset of tables, views materialised for faster reporting

Reports run against either instance, but some reports

(esp with outer join requirements) still difficult /
impossible
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The Need Perceived

Information stovepiped
No big picture / KPIs / Performance
Monitoring / Scorecarding
We had pushed Impromptu (our reporting
tool) as far as it or any other product
available would go against our Corporate
Systems, and there were still gaps which
needed addressing
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Our Sales Pitch to Users

Faster reporting from the data
warehouse
Faster access to the originating
applications
Better quality data
Value added data providing
information that does not exist in
the source applications
Ability to report across
applications
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Benefits ( more)
Provide a single version of the truth
Have the ability to import additional data
Provide better data structures for ad hoc
reporting
We can do PowerPlay (OLAP) stuff again!!

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10

Limitations
Not necessarily the latest view of the data
Development will be evolutionary, not big
bang
Data must already exist or be derivable

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The Journey Begins

Data free zone
(Acting Pro Vice Chancellor circa 2002)

Lonely Vice-Chancellors Lunch great opportunity to

start the push
(Student-free zone New Year 2004)

Presentations to Senior Management about the needs

assistance from COGNOS
Build the foundation first

Minimise risk
No big ticket expenditure (existing resistance)
Not interested in Big Bang approach (existing resistance)
Much prefer slowly slowly catchee monkey (survival strategy)

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Speedbumps Unlimited
Business case from hell
Executive turnover
Budget blues
Politics
Business Case --> RFI --> ITO
Delays due to (un)due process and staff
unavailability dragged on well into 2004
Extended evaluation / selection process
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At last the Decision!!

4 products shortlisted after proof of
concept & demonstrations
3 would do the job from our observations
2 within budget
DecisionStream was the only one that did
both

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Why DecisionStream?
Dimensionally friendly
Dimensionally friendly
Slowly Changing Dimension Friendly
Strong vendor relationship (over 20 years)
Headstart for PS Financials
Starter (err throwaway) Impromptu & PowerPlay
Catalogs and Models
#$^&*()(*&^%$ cheap err good value
And did I already mention it handles dimensional
processing?
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The Journey Begins in Earnest

Product purchased in late May 04
Training and consulting arranged for July 04
First requirements gathering run to
Melbourne / Sydney / Brisbane / Gold Coast
campuses in August 04
Continual dialogue with power users

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The Journey Continues

Requirements gathering also a
promotional activity
Also expectation setting exercise
Promised industrial strength ODS in 6
weeks
Promised first release of data marts out by
end of year
Actually Mid June 2005
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Complications
Everyone wants to dump their old data in
the warehouse
DecisionStream has more switches than a
electrical wholesale shop and more
options than a Lego catalogue
Executive turnover + University review +
Reorganisation + ..
Meant ever moving interview target
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More complications
Personal Issues 2004

Issues beyond our / my control

Deployment pushed out BUT

Additional time spent learning what the tool does and does not
do we believe will continue to pay dividends

Personnel Issues 2005

Shift happens
Acting Associate Directorship limited Powerplay expertise
availability
When modelling begins in earnest, expect a bit of extra work on
the ETL end

Team at full strength numerically End May 2005 but need

to bring new member up to speed
Sometimes staff called in to help in other areas wed
prefer to avoid (eg debugging of complex PS COBOL)
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From my Perspective
Conscious decision to focus first on investigating
technology and understanding warehousing
Revisited schedule after Christmas break 2004-5 and
redeployment
We all know what we cant answer

Lots of street credibility in the bank

Beta release of first two marts out with power users
very pleased with the results

First query on GPA at Melbourne Campus

timed out after 30 minutes on production / and on ODS

21 seconds on first mart at a finer grain level (student course
enrolments)
5 seconds on aggregated mart (student current program level)

Currently takes around 1 second!!!

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From the Unis Perspective

Users reluctant to move off prod system
Technical issues with MOE and individual
TNSNAMES file

Will be encouraged to do so
Carrot (speed of ODS) and
Stick (cut down time out length on production system)

As warehouse marts delivered, the resulting

speed improvement will be impossible to ignore

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Where next?
Requirements gathering & consolidation
Deploy more student data first
Move to other and the cross-subject areas
(Finance & HRMS in particular)
ReportNet / Scorecarding / Dashboarding /
Case Management ???

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Diving in for a Closer Look

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Stars in Our Eyes

We chose Kimball Star
Schema approach as it
was our preferred of 2
approaches available
cf Bill Inmons
approach
Dimensional Tables
shared across all Fact
Tables (Conformed)
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Student Program Data Mart For

Every Student Program

Total Courses Registered

Total Courses Dropped
Total Courses Enrolled
Total Courses Passed
Total Courses Failed
Total Courses Outstanding

Total Credit Points Attempted

Total Credit Points Passed
Total Credit Points
Outstanding

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Weighted GPA
Total Grade Points
Total GP Credits Taken
Total Workload Attempted
Total Workload Passed
(EFTSL)
Total Workload Outstanding
(EFTSL)
CQU Transfer Credits
Other Transfer Credits
Total Transfer Credits

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Student Program Dimensions

Student Personal Details

Personal information about each student, including names and addresses,

biodemographic.data, citizenship and presence at the University.

Program Details

Information about each academic program.

Latest Student Program Details

The latest information about each student program.

Expected Final Term Details

The term the student expects to finish the program.

Completion Term Details

The actual term the student completed the program.

First Student Program Details

The earliest information about each student program.

Application Details

Some information about the student program application.

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Questions?

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