Another possible name for a real-time data warehouse is Operational Data Store (ODS). You will want a really good handle on the requirements for this. I have worked in this arena with U2 for almost a decade. There are many possibilities, but the biggest bang for the buck from my perspective is still to have users grab data from U2, where the data "thinks" like they do.
Setting up to be able to populate spreadsheets from whatever is extracted, for example, is much easier than taking data from a non-1NF database that is quite easily understood by end-users and normalizing it only to find that users are then trying to second guess how the data looks in the new database and figuring out how to regroup it for a report. Using Cedarville's DOWNLOAD utility (you would want to wrap it for the end-user) or the www.entrinsik.com Informer tool from a web browser would let the user think intuitively to extract current data (without need for an ODS) and THEN populate a spreadsheet with the result. Any approach to actually porting data to SQL Server, for example, sounds so small and innocent until two years down the line you add up the costs of hardware, software, training for users and IT, on-going support, etc and find that it was a much bigger expense than anyone estimated up front. Just my two cents. Best wishes! --dawn Dawn M. Wolthuis Tincat Group, Inc. www.tincat-group.com Take and give some delight today. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
