Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Proof of concept process
The proof of concept process was conducted as an onsite exercise with three vendors, and this included the
transportation and setup of the actual appliance in the data center. The entire process of the infrastructure
setup was also scored and recorded for a production execution. The remaining steps of the POC included
the execution of a set of use cases on the appliance, which was loaded with all the current production data.
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Configuration and setup—the appliance vendors brought their infrastructure and set up the same
in the data center. The key pieces of information that were used for creating a scorecard included:
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Floor space requirements
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Networking requirements
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Setup process: ease of use
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Administration tools
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Monitoring tools
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Data architect/Database administrator tools
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Data loading and setup—the appliance vendors were provided with the current data model and the
complete backup of the current data in the EDW. The vendors were asked to load the data into the
appliance and the process was timed and scored. The data loading and setup process included:
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Data types and compatibility issues
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Database functions supported and not supported
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Data load scripts
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Special tools used for loading the data
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Storage layout and design
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Data compression
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POC execution—the proof of concept execution included a set of reports (or report SQL),
analytical queries, and queries that do not currently execute due to various reasons.
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The use cases were scored based on response time, accuracy, number of concurrent users, data
usage statistics, ease of execution, and number of queries executed concurrently.
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Additional tests were executed by connecting the current ETL and BI applications.
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There were multiple cycles of the use cases execution conducted on the appliance platform
with the following constraints:
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Appliance initial setup with no tuning—in this cycle the queries were executed on the
appliance based on the initial setup.
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Minimal tuning—in this cycle the appliance was tuned for minimal improvements.
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Complete performance tuning—in this cycle the appliance was tuned to perform at its
optimal best.
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Selection phase—the execution of the POC was completed and a final scorecard was created,
which included scoring by the business users, scoring by data center teams, and scoring by the
POC team. The final recommendation of the vendor was made based on the consensus among all
stakeholders and the move to go ahead was taken.
Program roadmap
The next step of the modernization was to plan the migration program from the EDW to the appliance
platform. This program roadmap included:
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Architecture analysis—based on the appliance architecture, there are changes that need to be
made to the data model, the data architecture itself, the ETL process, and the aggregate tables
