DW Architect
DW Architect is an integrated Rapid Design, Generation, Deployment Platform for Data Warehouses and ETL. Using our design environment, developers import and create Meta Data about Source Systems, Data Warehouse database schema and ETL processes. Using this Meta Data, ‘DW Architect’ generates the necessary code using code generation templates.
The code is then deployed to test or production servers using our deployment platform. Once deployed, the ETL Batch process is executed by the based on a schedule, using our DW Batch Manager product.
Key Benefits
- Dramatically reduced development time and cost.
- Generates Database Schema and End to End ETL.
- One click Deployment.
- Import Meta Data from Source Systems to quickly define Staging and Warehouse tables.
- Auto matching to quickly define ETL processes.
- Prebuilt Batch Execution and Management application. (DW Batch Manager)
- Reduced Testing and Bug fixing required.
- Rapid prototyping and shorter feedback loops allow developers and business user to collaborate and produce better outcomes.
- Quickly iterate through the Discover, Design, Generate and Deploy loop, engage business customers in a Pilot environment, and garner feedback often.
- Flexibility to meet rapidly changing business requirements.
- Make a single change in the Design environment, then re-generate. Your change(s) propagate throughout the entire solution.
- Confidence in a Quality Solution.
- DW Architect comes pre-configured with best practice generation templates and patterns to ensure the quality of your solution, regardless of the skill level of your Data Warehouse team. Patterns conform to Kimball design principles.
- Heterogeneous Multi Source System environment support.
- DW Architect supports data warehouses with multi source systems and a large variety of source types, flat files, databases, XML and Excel
- Developer Continuity.
- As developers come and go, the DW Architect single Meta Data repository enhances continuity between developers improving the maintainability of the solution
- Learning and Training.
- Less experienced personnel benefit from best practice Patterns baked into the software.
- Control Standards.
- Architects can maintain control of the solution by embedding their own standards into the generation templates. This avoids a proliferation of different coding standards, that once in place are difficult to reverse and difficult to maintain.
- IDE, Source Control and Multi Developer compatible.
- DW Architect integrates into Visual Studio, producing project artefacts that are compatible with any source control system, enabling multi developer collaboration
- Automate Deployment.
- Design environment supports command line Generation and Deployment. (DW Batch Manager)
- API, Extensible and Flexible.
- Developers can create custom Meta Data, Generation Templates, Generation Engines, Deployment Engines and Batch task Execution providers to target your environment or unique requirements.
- Don’t get locked in.
- Target any environment through API hooks that allow developers to create generators for any environment.
- Target Multiple environments with the same Meta Data.
Features
Our Design tool allows you to design your Data Warehouse and ETL processes. Using the resulting Meta Data ‘DW Architect’ uses customizable code generation templates, to generate the code.
DW Architect is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio, and instantly familiar to developers. Visual Studio shell is free to download, and is installed by default with Microsoft SQL Server Client tools. Design your Data Warehouse alongside your other Business Intelligence projects for Analysis Services and Reporting Services etc.
Design Staging Tables and Data Extraction Processes
Quickly define Staging tables and Extract processes by connecting to and importing table and column Meta Data from your source systems. Many different connection sources are supported. Column mapping between source and staging tables can defined for Extract code generation. Supports complex query sources, expressions, custom Meta data and derived table creation for more complex Extract requirements.
Design Facts, Dimensions and Transformation/Load Processes
DW Architect allows you to design Facts and Dimensions.
Define dimension business keys and attributes including attribute descriptions, data types, slowly changing types, parent settings etc. Define custom surrogate key data types and names, and custom meta data for more complex design requirements.
Design fact tables and their dimensionality in the data warehouse. Define measures, their data type and description. Associate the Fact with the dimensions defined in the project. DW Architect caters for Role play names, Many to Many dimensions and conforming dimensions from other Data Marts.
Define Transform and Load Meta Data with Staging to Dimension attribute mapping, ETL patterns, Matching criteria, Filters, Expressions etc.
IDE Integration, Source Control and Multiple Developers
Design your data warehouse in the familiar Visual Studio environment with full source control compatibility and multi developer support.
DW Architect is a custom Visual Studio project type. Design your Data Warehouse right alongside your other BIDS projects for Analysis Services and Reporting Services. Visual Studio is a free downloadable IDE from Microsoft. Only the free downloadable Visual Studio shell is required.
DW Architect includes a code generation platform to generate the required code from Meta Data defined in the Design Environment. The platform includes a user interface, engines and templates to generate the entire suite of Data Warehouse and ETL code artefacts required to implement your data warehouse. The code can be generated through the management console or by command line. The code generation platform is extensible allowing you to develop your own templates, and generation engine providers.
Included are templates and engines to generate:
- Staging Tables DDL synchronization.
- Data Warehouse Tables DDL synchronization.
- Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) procedures.
- Table Management procedures.
- Data Dictionary.
Included Engines are:
- XSLT generation Engine. Create XSLT templates to generate code from ‘DW Architect’ Meta Data.
Non-Destructive DDL Generation
It is important that data is not destroyed, when the Data Warehouse schema is updated. Existing schema synchronisation tools implement a column name change as a drop and create column pair destroying data in the existing column as they do so.
DW Architect advanced DDL generation methods preserves data, recognizes name changes, and generates scripts which test the existing state of your data warehouse, creating and modifies tables and columns as required.
DW Architect makes code deployment simple. ‘DW Architect’ includes a code deployment platform to deploy generated code to local, test and production environments. The platform includes a user interface and deployment providers to deploy code to various target servers. The code can be deployed via the management console or by command line.
The code generation platform is extensible allowing you to develop your own deployment providers to target custom server environments.
A configuration file is created for each target environment. Within the configuration file connection strings and other variables (as required) specific for the environment are defined. The deployment
process utilizes this configuration file and deployment Providers to deploy the code to the target environment, setting variable as required.
DW Architect includes an SQL Deployment Provider to deploy code to a Microsoft SQL Server.
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Rapid Prototype
Rapid Prototyping allows developers to generate demonstration applications in days. This allows developers to engage business users, and get instant feedback. Traditionally proto types have been throwaway. With DW Architect, the prototype become the first iteration of a Data Warehouse in an Agile process.
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Best Practice Baked-In
Code generated is based on Ralph Kimball design principles. Ralph Kimball is a thought leader in Data Warehouse design and founder of Kimball University. He is also the author of the Data Warehouse Toolkit and Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit book. A Recent survey shows that nearly 70% of data warehouses are architected using Ralph’s principles.
Inexperienced data warehouse developers can learn the principles of data warehouse design from the code generated by the templates.
DW Architect, out of the box, includes 14 code generation templates to generate all aspects of the Data Warehouse and ETL. Additional custom templates can be created.
The templates generate a Staging database, Data Warehouse in Star Schema, Extracts, Type 1 and 2 slowly changing dimension code, Fact Transform code and all other supporting tables and data.
The templates employ a checksum technique to quickly detect changes and are optimized for high performance.