Other applications can call BI web services directly. So for example if a call centre operator is using a CRM package such as Siebel as a customer service application while dealing with a customer, they can request BI about that customer on-demand at the click of a button. Siebel could then request BI from a BI tool (e.g. predictive analytics such as propensity to buy or propensity to churn) by invoking mining models that have been published as web services from within Siebel. This would retrieve the customer’s history from a data warehouse and mine it to provide the requested analytics back to Siebel in XML. Equally on-demand recommendations can be provided in a similar manner. Figure 5 shows how application BI web services can be invoked.
Figure 5 - Application and integration – 2-way use of BI Web Services
Data Level BI Web Services
Two main forms of BI web services exist at the data level. These are BI web services in the database itself and data integration web services such as EII federated query based BI web services and ETL workflow based BI web services that can deliver integrated BI and other related content on-demand. Both can be database and data integration BI web services can be consumed by applications, BI tools, and portals.
BI web services in the DBMS effectively appear as user defined functions (UDFs) that can be exploited by applications and tools that issue SQL or XML queries against the database. IBM’s DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server “Yukon” for example support web services in the DBMS. Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and several other multi-dimensional DBMSs also supports XML for Analysis (XML/A) which allows multi-dimensional queries to be executed as web services. In IBM DB2, an administrator can browse a UDDI registry and import web services into the DBMS as user defined functions. DB2 generates CREATE USER DEFINED FUNCTION statements for each web service imported and therefore effectively adds additional functions to the pre-built set of statistical, regression and OLAP functions provided by the DBMS out of the box. BI tools and application can then invoke these functions via SQL which causes DB2 to invoke the appropriate web services on the net. This is effectively using BI web services to exploit grid computing. Hence the DBMS can “outsource” functionality to other BI web services and then collect the data from these services before passing a result back to the application or tools querying the DBMS (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 - IBM DB2 Web Services add additional aggregate functions to the database for exploitation in applications
Many ETL tools are also now introducing web service interfaces which means that new ETL workflows can be built in ETL tools and published as web services. Applications and portals can then invoke these to integrate data “on-demand” i.e. right now. Hence data can be retrieved from multiple sources about a person, a product, an asset for example and integrated on-the-fly before passing the data back to an application. In this case a data warehouse or data mart can be used as a source as opposed to a target. Here the target is the application that requests the data via a web service XML request (See Figure 7). This is effectively ETL tools evolving into the Enterprise Information Integration (EII) market to support on-demand data integration. Already several ETL tools support this capability including Ascential with Real-Time Integration Services, Business Objects Data Integrator and Informatica. Of course new EII products also exist such as BEA Liquid Data, Certive, Ipedo, MetaMatrix, IBM DB2 Information Integrator and X/Aware. These products also integrate data on-demand and use federated query to integrate data. Each EII query can be published as a web service and invoked on-demand to access data in data warehouses, data marts and other systems and integrate it before passing this integrated data back to applications or portals as XML.
Figure 7 - ETL support for EII – Operational applications invoke ETL workflows on-demand to provide EII capability
If you have a complex BI environment with multiple BI data stores, then on-demand data integration can also be used to integrate data from multiple BI systems to calculate higher level metrics needed in executive scorecards and dashboards on-demand.
Process Level BI Web Services
At the business process level, BI web services can be invoked as activities that are part of an executing business process (e.g. to produce intelligence in the form of a report and distribute this to people). Here business process management software would invoke the BI web services at particular point(s) in a process to execute a BI web service in the context of a particular process activity being performed at the time. In addition BI web services can be invokes to provide support for business activity monitoring (BAM). In the case of BAM, it is likely to be an event such as an order change or a cancelled order that triggers the execution of a web service. In this case the event may trigger on-demand data integration, automated analysis and automated action. BAM is an exciting new area for business intelligence and something I will explore in my next article on techniques for integrating BI into the enterprise when I look at the last of the four popular techniques mentioned at the beginning of this article i.e. deploying event-driven on-demand BI processing.About the Author
Mike Ferguson is Managing Director of Intelligent Business Strategies Limited,
a leading information technology analyst and consulting company.
As an analyst and consultant he specializes in enterprise
business intelligence, enterprise business integration, and
enterprise portals. Mike can be contacted at (44) (0) 1625
520700 or e-mail at .
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