One of the harsh realities of data warehousing today is the urgent need to make more data more available, for more applications with more users - and to do so without causing a disruptive “revolution” in existing systems.

At SAP TechEd, you will have the opportunity to meet with SAND executives and technology experts to discuss how you can implement a flexible Intelligent Information Management architecture as anevolution of your current data warehouse systems. SAND/DNA solutions leverage the existing infrastructure into which you have put years of effort and financial investment, creating a data warehouse architecture that allows you to keep massive and ever-growing amounts of data available at a greatly reduced TCO.

Find out how SAND/DNA can enable:

• Better management of larger amounts of information
• More efficient satisfaction of SLAs and business analysis requirements using a flexible and agile data framework
• Reduced backup and recovery times
• Accelerated data loading and query processing for reporting and analytics
• Enriched analytic functionality
• Better compliance with regulatory requirements.

10:30 - 10:45
Next Generation Enterprise Data Warehousing mit SAP NW BI 7.0 und NLS

10:45– 12:30
Die SAND Nearline-Lösung für SAP NW BI 7.0

• Live-Demo
• Fallbeispiele/Kundenberichte/Projekterfahrungen
• Nutzen und Potentiale für den Betrieb des SAP BW

More info…

One of the harsh realities of data warehousing today is the urgent need to make more data more available, for more applications with more users - and to do so without causing a disruptive “revolution” in existing systems.

At TDWI San Diego, you will have the opportunity to meet with SAND executives and technology experts to discuss how you can implement a flexible Intelligent Information Management architecture as an evolution of your current data warehouse systems. SAND/DNA solutions leverage the existing infrastructure into which you have put years of effort and financial investment, creating a data warehouse architecture that allows you to keep massive and ever-growing amounts of data available at a greatly reduced TCO.

Find out how SAND/DNA can enable:

• Better management of larger amounts of information
• More efficient satisfaction of SLAs and business analysis requirements using a flexible and agile data framework
• Reduced backup and recovery times
• Accelerated data loading and query processing for reporting and analytics
• Enriched analytic functionality
• Better compliance with regulatory requirements.

Visit the TDWI San Diego Website…

“The continuing data explosion is a challenge facing organizations all over the world. Having FreeSat as a strategic reseller enables SAND to help organizations in the Asian region manage their growing volumes of data in an extremely cost-effective way,” said Linda Arens, Vice President, Global Alliances and Marketing, SAND Technology. “We are very fortunate and honored to have a partner of such high quality as FreeSat representing SAND in this region.”

“We are very pleased to act as SAND’s reseller in South Korea and the Asian region,” said D.O. Shin, Managing Director of Sales for FreeSat. “Because of its ability to manage huge volumes of data with minimal hardware and administration requirements, SAND/DNA software is a key component of the solutions that we offer our customers.”

SAND/DNA enables enterprise customers in all industries to cost-effectively retain massive amounts of compressed data in a nearline repository for extended periods, in accordance with any applicable business rules and regulatory requirements, and to rapidly retrieve information when needed. A centralized data management solution with unparalleled performance and storage efficiency, the SAND/DNA suite dramatically reduces costs and management complexity while ensuring continuous data availability. Organizations can create data marts on demand to respond to any analytic requirement with all enterprise data — current or historical, detailed or summarized. SAND/DNA’s advanced information management technology compresses data to typically 10 percent of its original size, while giving users the ability to query any attributes of the data without decompressing it first. This next-generation capability is ideal for satisfying enterprise compliance requirements as well as for leveraging valuable information in data warehouses.

DÜSSELDORF/ESSEN – EDS Itellium hat sich gemeinsam mit einem Großkunden für den Einsatz der Nearline-Speicherlösung SAND/DNA für SAP Business Intelligence (SAP BI, Business Warehouse 7.0) von SAND Technology entschieden, einem internationalen Anbieter von Lösungen für intelligentes Informationsmanagement in Unternehmen. EDS Itellium hat unter anderem gemeinsam mit SAP die Entwicklung von SAP for Retail für den Handel maßgeblich gestaltet und passgenaue Lösungen entwickelt.

Ziel war es, eine effiziente und kostengünstige Lösung für den Umgang mit rasant wachsenden Datenmengen zu finden, die wenig frequentiert werden, jedoch für das BI-System weiterhin im Online-Zugriff verbleiben sollen. EDS Itellium unterstützt seinen Kunden dabei mit einem mehrstufigen und weit reichenden Beratungsansatz über alle Phasen der verschiedenen Projektzyklen.

„Gerade im Handelsumfeld fallen Detaildaten aus Bewegungen auf einer elementaren Ebene an“, erläutert André Paul, Leiter der Business Unit Business Intelligence bei EDS Itellium. „Dadurch ergibt sich ein sehr rasch wachsendes und extrem großes Datenvolumen. Wir standen daher vor der Entscheidung, in weiteren Speicherplatz zu investieren oder auf eine softwaretechnische Lösung zu bauen. Letztere musste in der Lage sein, eine Archivierung mit direktem, für den Endanwender transparentem Online-Zugriff bereit zu stellen. Darüber hinaus war eine äußerst hohe Datenverdichtung von größter Wichtigkeit.“

Unter Berücksichtigung dieser Rahmenbedingungen entschied sich EDS Itellium Ende 2007 für die Nearline-Speicherlösung SAND/DNA, die den IT-Dienstleister vor allem im Hinblick auf den direkten Online-Zugriff und mit einer hohen Kompressionsrate von etwa eins zu zehn überzeugte. Weitere Entscheidungshilfen waren, dass keine weitere Investition in Hardware erfolgen musste und die Implementierung bzw. anschließende produktive Nutzung einfach und schnell erfolgen konnte. Für die Implementierung waren beispielsweise lediglich zwei Tage Unterstützung seitens SAND notwendig.

Die von SAP für ihre Integration zertifizierte Nearline-Speicherlösung wurde von SAND speziell im Hinblick auf die steigenden Anforderungen des Datenmanagements entwickelt, vor denen Unternehmen mit dem rasanten Wachstum ihrer SAP BI-Lösungen stehen. Bei der Unterstützung des SAP BI bietet die SAND-Lösung drei Vorteile. Dabei handelt es sich um die außergewöhnliche Datenkomprimierung von in der Regel rund 90 Prozent beim derzeit bei dem Großkunden eingesetzten DBMS-System; geringere Gesamtkosten, da deutlich weniger Aufwand beim Datenmanagement anfällt und Backup-Volumina sowie Backup-Zeiten reduziert werden können sowie eine lineare Skalierbarkeit mit einem planbaren Durchlauf und Durchsatz.

„Wir kalkulieren in der jetzigen Ausbaustufe mit vier Terabyte Rohdaten, die wir auslagern wollen“, ergänzt Paul. „Wenn man die Komprimierungsrate von eins zu zehn annimmt, müssen mit Hilfe der Lösung von SAND nur noch 400 Gigabyte gemanagt werden.“ Die größten Vorteile aus wirtschaftlicher Sicht sieht Paul darin, dass Investitionen in weiteren Speicherplatz reduziert werden können und sich die Administrationszeiten sowie die damit verbundenen Kosten, insbesondere im Bereich Backup und im Falle eines Recovery, reduzieren. „Gerade die Einsparungen bei den Administrationszeiten helfen EDS Itellium bei der Optimierung der Wartungszeiten und des Nachtfensters“, so Paul weiter.

„Wir freuen uns, dass sich EDS Itellium und der betreute Großkunde für die Nearline-Speicherung mit SAND/DNA für SAP BW entschieden hat“, kommentiert Dr. Michael Hahne, Vice President, Business Development Manager, SAND Technology. „Dies belegt die Fähigkeit der Lösung, jede beliebige Menge selten genutzter Daten zu verwalten, schnellen Zugriff darauf zu ermöglichen und diese hoch effizient zu speichern. Damit gelingt es, die Gesamtkosten für die Anwender zu senken und diese gleichzeitig dabei zu unterstützen, ihre rasant wachsenden Data Warehouses effizienter zu verwalten.“

EDS

EDS, eines der weltweit führenden Unternehmen für Technologie-Dienstleistungen, erstellt für seine Kunden Lösungen zur Verbesserung ihres Geschäftserfolges. EDS hat das Outsourcing von Informationstechnologie (IT) vor mehr als 46 Jahren begründet. Heute verfügt EDS über ein breites Portfolio an Dienstleistungen zum Outsourcing von IT und Geschäftsprozessen (BPO). EDS betreut weltweit Kunden in den Segmenten Konsumgüter und Handel, Fertigung, Finanz, Gesundheit, Kommunikation, Energie, Transport und öffentliche Verwaltung. Weitere Informationen: www.eds.de

EDS ITELLIUM

EDS ITELLIUM ist eine Mehrheitsbeteiligung von EDS in Deutschland und mit seinem Centre of Retail Expertise (CORE) auf handelsspezifische Geschäftslösungen fokussiert. Das Portfolio von EDS ITELLIUM deckt die gesamte Wertschöpfungskette des Handels von Beratung über Systemintegration bis hin zur kundenspezifischen Anwendungsentwicklung ab. Weitere Informationen: www.eds-itellium.com

Super charge your queries & save on storage

• SAP Certified pre-tested and optimised appliance from Sun Microsystems
• 95% compression for  PSA data, ODS objects & info cubes
• On-the-fly data aggregation eliminates query tuning
• 10 to 100 times the Ad Hoc performance.

There are two opportunities to explore this value yourself:

• Meet the specialists at SAP’s Clockhouse Place on the 25th June. To do so book your place
• Test our claims by signing up for a 30 day sandpit trial

More info…

Montreal, June 18, 2008. SAND Technology Inc. (OTCBB: SNDTF.DB), an international provider of intelligent enterprise information management software, today announced that Zainab Ahmed Schwartz has joined the firm as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance and Administration. The previous CFO, Gilles Therrien, relinquished these positions in order to pursue his career in another industry.

“I am most sorry to be losing Gilles Therrien, whose counsel has been very valuable to me”, said Arthur Ritchie, Chief Executive Officer of SAND. “However, the company is privileged to attract a new Chief Financial Officer with the level of ability and experience that Zainab brings to us, and we are confident she will make a strong contribution to our management team”.

Before joining SAND, Zainab Ahmed Schwartz was Director of Internal Controls at Quebecor World Inc. Before this, she was employed at Deloitte & Touche LLP, where she specialized in auditing technology and telecommunications clients – including two of the largest public Canadian telecommunications companies – as well as private software technology companies. She has extensive experience in matters relating to compliance with business regulations in both the US (Sarbanes-Oxley) and Canada.

Zainab Ahmed Schwartz holds a Graduate Diploma in Accountancy from Concordia University in Montreal, along with a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

Column tokenization is a process in which a unique identifier (called a Token ID) is assigned to each unique value in a column, and then employed to represent that value anywhere it appears in the column. Using this approach, data size reductions of up to 50% can be achieved, depending on the number of unique values in the column (that is, on the column’s cardinality). Some RDBMS’s use this technique simply as a way of compressing data; the column tokenization process is integrated into the buffer and I/O subsystems, and when a query is executed, each row needs to be materialized and the token IDs replaced by their corresponding values. At SAND, column tokenization is the core of our technology: the tokenized structure is actually used during query execution, with row materialization occuring only when the final result set is returned. We also use special compression algorithms to achieve further size reduction, typically on the order of 95%.

The scope of the column tokenization process can vary, depending on the specific implementation: some databases (like SAND) will create and maintain a single pool of unique values for the entire database, while others will create a hidden pool for each unit of page size or block size. Another major difference relates to how dynamic the process is: in some RDBMS’s, the cardinality of the column must be specified in advance in order for the system to select the correct Token ID size (a Token ID is usually an unsigned integer number stored into 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes and 1 bit). Making this specification requires a survey of the data, which can be a time-consuming operation. SAND’s implementation is dynamic, in that the Token ID size is automatically selected during the tokenization process, and can vary within a given column. Finally, some databases perform multi-column tokenization, where a single Token ID is used to replace the values of multiple contiguous columns taken together. For example, if a table contains the contiguous columns “Product_Id”, “Product_Name” and “Product_Description”, a single Token ID might be used to replace the associated values in these three columns. Multi-column tokenization of this sort has some constraints: the columns must be contiguous, they can’t be updatable, and the table rows need to be materialized before being used to respond to a query.

The list of unique values created by the column tokenization process can be defined as a hidden “dictionary”, or can be a real database object created by the DBA. At SAND, we call this structure a Domain. Once created, a given Domain can be associated with different Columns: for example a Domain defined to store IP addresses can be used by any column of any table in the database that contains IP address data. Having columns that share the same underlying domain enables quick comparisons, since integer values will be compared rather than character values. This can improve the overall operational performance of the database. Another interesting aspect of the tokenization process is the logic of Token ID assignment: Token IDs can be assigned in chronological order or in a Lexical order. The Lexical ordering transforms the underlying Token ID into a Lexical ID, which enables fast ordering.

A specific type of tokenization can be used for integer values, where the integer value itself can become the Token ID. This representation enables definition of Universel Token IDs, which can be exchanged between distributed databases that share the same underlying architecture but not the same value set. Often, a database will contain multiple columns that act as flags with only two possible values, for example Y and N or 1 and 0. For those columns, the underlying tokenization process can be associated with a bitmap, where 0 will associated with one value, and 1 with the other .

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Column Tokenization techniques have been in use for a long time, and have demonstrated great advantages for very large databases in terms of I/O workload reduction. Currently there are not many commercial databases that operate directly on tokenized structures to enable query performance improvement. The notion of Universal Token IDs, or pseudo-Universal Token IDs, is an interesting concept which could be used to improve and secure database data exchange and physical data partitioning.

In upcoming posts, I will introduce the concept of Intelligent Information Management, as supported by the implementation of a Corporate Information Memory.

Richard Grondin

In SAP BI environments, access to data in active ODS tables or DataStore Objects (DSOs) is typically achieved via direct SQL statements. This process is particularly important when attributes of target structures are derived from other information stored in ODS Objects or DSOs – for example, when sales information is expanded to include market classification or customer classification attributes. Until now, if the classifying ODS or DSOs were even partially stored nearline, the nearline part of the data would not be considered.

The Nearline Lookup API for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and SAP BW 3.x was developed to address this issue by enabling combined access to both actively used data and related nearline data. SAND/DNA Query Generator makes it much easier to develop query programs for specific ODS Objects or DSOs using the Nearline API for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and SAP BW 3.x.

SAND/DNA - Nearline Software for SAP BI

As data volumes grow and user demands increase, SAP NetWeaver® customers are facing significant data management challenges as well as heightened costs. To help with these issues, SAP recommends implementing an Information Life Cycle (ILM) architecture. In accordance with SAP’s ILM strategy, SAND Technology has teamed with SAP to integrate SAND/DNA as a nearline solution for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and SAP BW 3.x. 

In SAP BI systems, a nearline data repository is an intermediate step between the online database and an offline archive. The SAP BI NLS Interface makes it possible for less frequently used InfoCubes and DataStore Objects to be moved from the relational database into the nearline repository by means of data archiving processes (DAPs), then deleted from the relational database. SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 can then provide fast, transparent access to nearline data when there is a need to rebuild old performance indicators or reports, or to perform on audit on earlier data. The relational database thus stores only the current data, while older information which might become relevant later on, or which cannot be deleted for legal reasons, is stored using a nearline software solution. 

Designed to relieve SAP BI from the need to keep large amounts of infrequently used data in the online repository, SAND/DNA stores this data in a tiny footprint while maintaining easy data accessibility. Data is stored in an easily searchable, but highly compressed format which significantly reduces overhead and costs associated with typically retaining considerable amounts of historical data.

SAND/DNA™ version 2.3 software has achieved “Certified for SAP NetWeaver®” status for its integration with Near Line Storage for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) Release 7.0, and SAND Nearline Integration Controller has been certified as “Powered by SAP NetWeaver®”.

Top SAND executives and technology experts will be on hand to discuss how organizations can implement an intelligent information lifecycle management solution that leverages their existing infrastructure, allowing them to keep more data available at a greatly reduced TCO and enabling:

More efficient satisfaction of SLAs

• Reduction of backup and recovery times
• Acceleration of data loading and query processing for reporting and analytics
• Better management of larger amounts of information
• Compliance with regulatory requirements

More info…