Data Warehousing at Acxiom Paul Montrose Data Warehousing at Acxiom Paul Montrose.

Data Warehousing at Acxiom

Paul Montrose

Data Warehousing at Acxiom

Paul Montrose

Agenda• Acxiom Overview• Data warehouses• Transactional databases• Hybrid databases• What’s new/future innovations• Summary• Questions and answers

Acxiom OverviewAt Acxiom, we create and deliver

Customer and Information Management Solutions that enable

many of the largest, most respected companies in the world to build

great relationships with their customers. Acxiom achieves this by

blending data, technology and services to provide the most

advanced customer information infrastructure available in the

marketplace today.

Acxiom OverviewAcxiom customizes industry-specific solutions to solve the unique business issues of the Automotive, Financial Services, Government Services, Healthcare, Insurance, Media, Retail, Technology, Telecommunications, as well as Travel and Leisure industries.

Every solution that Acxiom offers is built from our core competencies:• CDI/Technology• Data• Database• Consulting and Analytics• Privacy Leadership• IT Outsourcing

Acxiom OverviewCustomer and Information Management Solutions for marketing, risk and IT help companies:

• Improve acquisition, retention, cross sell, up sell and channel management• Improve authorization, increase collections and reduce fraud• Increase operational efficiencies and improve end- user satisfaction

Data WarehousesThe characteristics of an Acxiom data warehouse generally are...

• Large multi-terabyte databases• Large periodic sequential data loads• Denormalized database schema• Sequential reads/full table scans• Little or no indices• Little or no transaction logging• Robust periodic backup solutions• Performance measured using megabytes/gigabytes per second (MBPS, GBPS)

IBM

Database

Data Warehouses

The processing platform is generally a large global class server or cluster of servers running UNIX.

The storage sub-system is very fast with wide bandwidth and high levels of redundancy which permits the ability to move large amounts of sequential data in a very short time.

The database is;

A large vertical database that is denormalized with few tables but very long with sorted data and are sometimes several billion rows.

The data is striped across the storage in a manner that prevents physical hot spots and takes advantage of the wide bandwidth.

IBM

Data Warehouses

Transactional DatabasesThe characteristics of an Acxiom transactional database generally are...

• Small, usually no larger than a few terabytes• Random and simultaneous inserts, updates, deletes, and queries• Random reads and writes• Normalized database schema• Transaction logging and archiving with incremental and periodic backup solutions• Generally sub-second response required per transaction taking into account concurrency• Performance measured using transactions per second (TPS) and I/O latency

IBM

Database

Transactional Databases

The processing platform is generally a medium/enterprise class server

The storage sub-system is very fast with low latency and nominal bandwidth and high levels of redundancy which permits the ability to move small amounts of selected data quickly.

The database is;

A normalized database that utilizes lookup tables.

The data is stored randomly within a table but striped across the storage to prevent physical hot spots.

Transactional Databases

IBM

Hybrid Databases

The characteristics of an Acxiom hybrid database generally are...

• Medium sized, usually three to ten terabytes• Random and simultaneous inserts, updates, deletes, and queries• Random and sequential reads and writes• Loosely normalized database schema• Indices used sparingly• Usually a batch maintenance process• Transaction logging and archiving with incremental and periodic backup solutions• Generally sub-second response required per transaction taking into account concurrency• Performance measured using TPS, I/O latency, and MBPS

IBM

Database

Hybrid Databases

The processing platform is generally a medium sized global class server

The storage sub-system is very fast with wide bandwidth and high levels of redundancy which permits the ability to move large amounts of random and sequential data in a very short time.

The database is;

A large vertical database that is loosely normalized with few tables but very long with sorted data and are sometimes more than a billions rows.

The data is striped across the storage in a manner that prevents physical hot spots and takes advantage of the wide bandwidth.

IBM

Hybrid Databases

What’s New/Future InnovationsGrid or scale-out environments...

• Utilize low cost commodity based servers• Low cost/no cost operating systems• Many servers can be working on one problem with the aggregate processing power being more that one large server for less money• Not locked into a single vendor or supplier• When adding a new node, able to use current technology at a lower price• Need to understand and factor in peripheral costs such as network, administration, data center etc.

Parallel Grid

DB

OS

DB

DB

DB DB

IBMserver

pSeries

IBMserver

pSeries

IBMserver

pSeries

IBMserver

pSeries

IBMserver

pSeries

IBMserver

pSeries

DB

DB

OS

Clustered Grid

• Shared nothing environment, each partition has its own resources allowing unlimited scalability (up to 999 partitions).

• Centralized management of partitioned environment.

• Data is equally distributed across all partitions.

Any partition can receive connections and distribute queries among the other nodes.

.

Distributed Grid Database

Summary• Understand the process in which the database is

to be used and fashion a solution to meet the requirements and customer expectations

• Even though a DBA may only be responsible for the database, many factors such as operating system and hardware configuration affect the functionality of the database and thus are a concern to the DBA. A DBA must relate the database to its environment to achieve an optimized solution.

• A large multi-terabyte database is not a scary monster, it is the same as dealing with a smaller database, just add a few more zeros.

Questions?