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Data Warehouse

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The Data Warehouse has offline and online components. These two components have very different availability requirements. A very large database that contains imported raw data should be unavailable for querying (offline) while data is being imported. If necessary, it can be clustered. Alternatively, if you do not require a high degree of availability for the database, you can back it up on a regular basis to tape or other permanent media. Commerce Server 2002 Data Warehouse does not support OLAP clustering.

The Data Warehouse imports IIS logs for the Business Analytics System and the Targeting System. The Data Warehouse has the following single-point-of-failure dependencies:

  • The Administration database (initialization)
  • IIS Log Import process
  • IIS Log File System
  • Product catalog import Data Transformation Services (DTS) task
  • Transaction data (baskets and orders) import DTS task
  • Profile data import DTS task
  • Campaign data import DTS task

Use the following steps to ensure the availability of the Data Warehouse:

  • Deploy Windows Clustering for the Administration, Profiling, Catalog, Transactions, and Marketing databases.
  • Deploy Windows Clustering for NTFS (IIS Log File System).

Online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes are data structures that the Data Warehouse uses to contain the data you import. The Business Analytics System uses this data to generate static and dynamic reports. This system has the following single-point-of-failure dependencies:

  • The Administration database
  • The Data Warehouse database
  • The OLAP/Analysis database
  • Commerce Server Business Desk

Use the following steps to ensure the availability of the Business Analytics System:

Deploy Windows Clustering for the Administration and Data Warehouse database. The Data Warehouse does not support OLAP clustering.

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  • You can add computers running SQL Server to Windows Clustering; OLAP servers cannot be clustered using Windows Clustering.

The Data Warehouse opens a database connection for each import and parser Data Transformation Services (DTS) task. The connection is maintained for the duration of the process and then dropped. If the database becomes unavailable during the process, the process fails, but you can restart it. If a failure occurs during import processing, you must manually delete any data that was only partially imported, and restart all import DTS tasks. If a failure occurs during cube generation, you must manually restart the post-import DTS task.

Commerce Server Data Warehouse has several features that enhance reliability. These features include:

  • Task retry. You use the retry options of the Commerce Server DTS tasks to control how many times and how frequently Commerce Server will try to run failed tasks.
  • Web log file import restart. You use the restart option for the Web log file import DTS task to control how Commerce Server deals with a Web log file import failure after all of the retry attempts have been used.
  • Task History. You use the Commerce Server Manager Task History to view the status of executed DTS tasks.

Using these features, you can maximize availability and reliability of the Data Warehouse by letting the import process restart and skip erroneous logs.

See Also

Running the Data Warehouse

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