1. Draw the high-level architecture from source systems through data marts for an enterprise data warehousing environment that follows the Corporate Information Factory (CIF) architecture approach. Make sure you clearly show your ETL and data delivery data flows from each source to each target. You will decide which data marts your environment will include. After you draw your diagram, you will then: 2. List and describe at least two (2) advantages of the CIF approach for enterprise-scale data warehousing for this company
3. List and describe at least two (2) challenges/disadvantages of the CIF approach for enterprise-scale data warehousing for this company
(given the situatioin and information below)
Situation: You work for a retail company that has stores and operations across the United States, but only in the United States. Currently your company has no data warehouses, data marts, operational data stores, or any other integrated stores of data used for reporting, BI, and analytics. Your company also has an Internet presence with a website from which customers can purchase products.
For purposes of this assignment, you are interested in the following seven applications:
1. Employee Management and Human Resources (HR), U. S. Eastern Region – this application manages all HR functions for employees in the company’s Eastern Region, which includes the east coast of the U. S. westward to states such as Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas. The functions managed by this application include hiring and termination; salary management; annual employee evaluations; promotions and demotions; and a current record of all job assignments.
2. Employee Management and Human Resources (HR), U. S. Western Region – this application is identical to the HR/Eastern Region application described above, except that it manages all employees in the Western Region which spans from states such as North Dakota, South Dakota, and other states down to Texas, and then west to Washington State, Oregon, and California.
3. Customer Relationship Master System, U. S. Eastern Region – this application contains a master list of all of the company’s customers headquartered in the states included in the Eastern Region. For each customer we also a complete sales history, the names of their top officers and key employees, and other important information that gives us a complete picture of "everything we need to know" about that customer.
4. Customer Relationship Master System, U. S. Western Region – this application is identical to the one described above, except that it contains the aforementioned information about all of the company’s customers headquartered in states that are included in the Western Region. 2
5. In-Store Sales System, U. S. Eastern Region – Each of the company’s stores has a point-of-sale (POS) system that handles all product purchases, payments, returns, and refunds. All of the stores in the company’s Eastern Region feed data daily from each POS system to a centralized In-Store Sales System for the Eastern Region, which summarizes all sales within the Eastern Region and also maintains a history of past sales as well.
6. In-Store Sales System, U. S. Western Region – This application is identical to the one described above, except that it consolidates and organizes sales data from all of our stores in the Western Region.
7. Online Sales System, United States – This application handles all Internet sales for all customers regardless of where they live in the United States. (For purposes of this assignment, assume that only U. S. residents can purchase products online.)