Data Warehouse Storage Engine
The Data Warehouse storage engine provides three storage processes for loading data into the Data Warehouse.
Summarization
Schema Management
Data Loading
Summarization
You use summarization to summarize user, transaction, campaign, and catalog data from the Commerce Server database when you run the Web server log import task and the Report preparation task. Summarizations transform raw data in the Commerce Server database into information in the Data Warehouse that you use to analyze user activity on your Web site. This is done by totaling and counting the related raw data.
For example, 1,000 records of single hits on a particular page are summarized into the information that the page had 1,000 hits. You can use this information to make decisions that will increase traffic on your Web site.
Schema Management
You use schema management to modify the Data Warehouse schema as needed during the import process. For example, if you add a new property to the User Object profile definition and mark it as exported, the User profile import process adds the new column to the Data Warehouse schema when user profile data containing that property is imported.
The following table lists the import process and describes the schema changes the Data Warehouse storage engine makes to the Data Warehouse schema.
| Import process | Data Warehouse schema change |
| Web log file | Query strings are added to the schema. |
| User | User profile properties are added to or removed from the schema. |
| Product catalog | Product catalog dimensions are added to or removed from the schema. |
Data Loading
You use data loading to support the loading of high volumes of data into the Data Warehouse database, using parallel reads and writes.
See Also
Configuring Web Log Files for Import
Configuring Web Log File Import Properties