The Commerce Server 2009 Data Warehouse is a combination of a SQL Server database, an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) database, and a set of processes that a system administrator uses to import and maintain data. The Data Warehouse stores and manages data in the database for performing data mining and analysis reporting.
The Data Warehouse imports a large amount of data collected from several different data sources. It collects day-to-day operational data about users who visit your site: user profile data, transaction data, and click-history data. It also collects product data and advertising data. The Data Warehouse gathers this data from Web server logs, Commerce Server 2009 databases, and other data sources that you specify. The Data Warehouse then manages the data in the database so that you can easily access it to create reports.
Features Overview
The following table describes the Data Warehouse features.
Feature
Description
Data import
Campaign Data Import DTS task. Import campaign data that includes advertisers, advertisement campaigns, and campaign item information.
Transaction Data Import DTS task. Define and import transaction data that is created on your Web site when a user adds and removes items from a shopping cart, or makes a purchase.
Web Server Log Import DTS task. Define, parse, and import log files into the Data Warehouse. Web server log files store data that Commerce Server 2009 obtains when users visit your site and then click links to site pages. The data includes the length of time a user spent visiting your site, the referring site, ad clicks, ad reach, click frequency, and the path the user takes through the site, including entry and exit pages.
Commerce and non-commerce sites. Import Web server log data from both Commerce Server 2009 and non-Commerce Server 2009 Web sites. Non-Commerce Server 2009 log files must be from Web sites that are not running Commerce Server 2009 but that produce log files in W3C extended log format.
Multiple sites. Imports the site host header that identifies which site generated an IIS log message.
Data integration
Catalog Data Import DTS task. Import data about products in the Commerce Server 2009 catalog database that includes dimensional information such as product name, description, color, and size. To display product reports, such as Product Analysis and Transaction Analysis, correctly, you must import catalog data. If you do not import catalog data into the Data Warehouse, you identify products in reports by their stock-keeping unit (SKU) numbers only.
IP Resolution DTS task. Resolve Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to make sure that the Data Warehouse contains data that is as meaningful as possible.
Profile Data Import DTS task. Import profile data collected on your Web site and site terms defined through the Customer and Orders Manager into the Data Warehouse. This action extends the schema of the Data Warehouse to allow for any new profile definition properties.
Cookie-less user tracking. Support tracking of users who do not allow cookies by using a URI query string, and allows for user identification for ASP.NET cookie-less sessions.
Tools
Data Warehouse Import Wizard. Quickly and easily import data into the Data Warehouse. You can also manually configure Data Warehouse DTS tasks to specify the data that you want to import.
Script support for DTS tasks. Automate creating and scheduling processes, such as Web log imports, for each site.
Supportability
Configuration Synchronization DTS task. Synchronize the Data Warehouse with your Commerce Server 2009 application after you change application configuration settings.
Report Preparation DTS task. Populate the online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes with data in the Data Warehouse. Commerce Server 2009 uses OLAP cubes to organize the summarized data in the Data Warehouse so that reports run faster.
Data Deletion DTS task. Delete data from the Data Warehouse.
Web log import recoverability. Restart DTS tasks upon failure and, where applicable, recover to the last checkpoint. Commerce Server 2009 implements check-pointing for long-running processing so that a failure does not require processing from the start, it just continues from the checkpoint immediately before the failure occurred.
User-configurable log file names and log file masks. Name log files and configure log file masks in formats other than the default predefined IIS log file masks. Users can configure what the log file name mask is in order to support hosting and non-commerce scenarios.
Global and site-specific DTS operations. Support for running DTS tasks at the site level and Data Warehouse level. This provides support for multiple sites in one Data Warehouse.
International
Catalog reporting language. Support for catalog reporting language that you can specify on a per catalog basis.
Multiple currencies. Incorporate user preferences for currency to enable currency-specific reporting.
Multilanguage. Import and integrate data using Unicode for profiles, catalogs, transactions, and marketing campaigns.