How Does the Data Warehouse Analytics System Work?

For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.

The Data Warehouse Analytics System transfers data from a Commerce Server site to a separate database so that a business manager can analyze site data without affecting the performance of the Web site.

The Data Warehouse Analytics System gathers data from the following sources:

• Internet Information Server (IIS) log files.

• The Commerce Server profiles database.

• The Commerce Server marketing database.

• The Commerce Server transactions database.

• The Commerce Server productcatalog database.

• Any data source for which you create a custom SQL Server Data Transformation Services (DTS) task to transfer data

DTS tasks extract data from the data sources, transform the data, and load the data into the Data Warehouse. The following DTS tasks perform these functions:

• Web Log Import

• IP Resolution

• Profile Data Import

• Data Deletion

• Campaign Data Import

• Configuration Synchronization

• Product Data Import

The DTS tasks use the OLE DB provider for Commerce Server. This converts site data into a logical representation and then transforms the logical representation into a physical representation. The physical representation determines how the data is stored in the SQL Server database.

The transformation from a logical representation to a physical representation is based on metadata that is stored in the Data Warehouse. You can modify the metadata to change how data is transformed.

Within the Data Warehouse, data is stored in SQL Server as tables and in SQL Server Analysis Server as online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes. The Report Preparation DTS task converts data from tables to cubes.

Business managers can use the reports that are included with Commerce Server to analyze data in the Data Warehouse. They can also use SQL Server Reporting Services to generate custom reports.

The following figure shows the high-level architecture of the Data Warehouse Analytics System.

See Also

Other Resources

Data Warehouse Analytics System Architecture