10.21.2015
TimeXtender, the world’s biggest provider of data warehouse automation (DWA) software for the Microsoft SQL Server, today announced the release of a completely revamped DWA product for the Microsoft SQL Server known as “TX DWA.”
The product has several major upgrades and new features to help data warehouse developers and users receive reporting and analysis straight from a data warehouse. The new tool also improves speed, performance, execution, and ease-of-use for numerous DWA tasks.
One of the biggest capabilities offered by TX DWA is machine learning and intelligence or what TimeXtender calls “Intelligent Managed Execution.” This feature, believed to be the first for the Microsoft SQL Server, is built into the execution and removes the ongoing need by developers to optimize the solution, resulting in significantly faster load times and stronger efficiency. This function can only be done using automation, as traditional deployments use a hand-coded solution and rely on parallel processing.
Companies are now using business intelligence tools to report directly from data warehouses as opposed to using OLAP cubes. This improvement puts demands on a data warehouse to be structured to deliver data direct to business applications so that the application can understand the data and then can easily be analyzed by the end-user. TX DWA provides many of the calculation tools needed by applications to interpret how all this data in the data warehouse fits together, and formulates the relationship between tables so that they can understand each other. TimeXtender has also added and improved several other automation functions in the new TX DWA.
“While a Data Warehouse Automation platform such as TimeXtender’s TX DWA allows a company to build a data warehouse much faster than with traditional methods, our goal is to make the process of building, deploying, and maintaining data warehouses faster, better, and easier with each new product release,” said Heine Krog Iversen, CEO, TimeXtender. “The keyword in all this is ‘automation.’ Why should anyone in the enterprise do routine or manual tasks when all this work can be automated?”
The following features and capabilities are available in the new TX DWA:
Aggregated Tables enable users to create aggregations such as sales per customer per month, which are saved along with the source table in the data warehouse.
Data Access Control allows the enterprise to control data access at the data warehouse level, which is important when reporting directly from the data warehouse. Users can be allowed or denied access to a specific table or granted access to only a subset of the data in a table.
Prioritization enables users to give priority to certain tables and sources to make sure tables are processed as early as possible. It is also possible to stop other tasks from being processed until a specific task has completed.
Maximum Simultaneous Data Transfers. A maximum number of simultaneous transfers from a specific data source can be set. This prevents one source from reducing the performance of the entire execution process because it cannot handle more than a few connections.
Safeguards for System Errors. Often, some sources in a solution are less critical for reporting than others. Configuration is now possible so that the execution does not stop simply because TX DWA cannot reach these noncritical systems. Users can choose to keep the newest data from the system until fresh data can be fetched.
Safeguards for Critical Errors. If a critical error occurs during execution, the error can be fixed and execution can be resumed from where it stopped. This eliminates the potential of hours of delay.
Easier Connection to New Data Sources. TimeXtender’s AnySource adapter works with specialized drivers provided by software suppliers or third-party developers that follow OLE DB or ADO standards. This allows users to connect to data sources that are not already supported by TX DWA, and where a driver already exists.
Several other upgrades have been made to remove or automate routine tasks. These include:
• Time Dimension contains indexes that make it easier to compare historical data with present data.
• Customer Periods can track data for seasonal or cyclical patterns to analyze and report.
• Project Variables enable developers to change the same value in multiple places and the change only has to be made once.
• Context Sensitive Variables such as server environment or user name provides an easy way to handle different development environments.
• Dynamic Perspectives allow users to create perspectives on a project that automatically includes all tables and objects related to one or more objects that they select. A dynamic perspective could be developed based on a function such as sales, production, or finance to provide an instantaneous overview of all objects related to this area.
TX DWA is now available direct at TimeXtender or through one of its partners or resellers. The product includes free upgrading for existing customers with an active maintenance agreement. For more information, contact TimeXtender at sales@timextender.com or 1-877-572-3477.
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