Owens Corning Case Essay, Research Paper

Owens Corning Case

1.Data Provisioning

OCF conceptualizes the principal IS production activities that produce value for the company as dealing processing, informations provisioning, and information bringing.

Data provisioning manages the stock list of informations and information, utilizing relational database direction systems and a information lexicon and informations catalog. Transaction processing shops merely the current informations necessary to supply the position of current operations. Data provisioning receives, shops, and manages all validated dealing informations from dealing processing. It besides provides informations back to dealing processing and information-to-information bringing when requested. Data lexicon and informations catalog maintain manner of what information exists, where it is stored, what it means, and who has authorization to entree it. That helps informations purveying to protect the information and to supply entree to informations and information to those who need it.

Data provisioning shops the organisational construction ordinances in tabular arraies in its database, so these ordinances can be changed without any troubles when direction decides to modify the organisation.

OCF created two relational databases to back up informations purveying? one to back up dealing processing and another to back up information bringing.

They used for dealing processing engineering IBM? s DB2 running on the mainframe, designed to treat high dealing volumes fast. For the information bringing engineering they used a TERADATA database machine & # 8211 ; a combination of hardware and package that is optimized for replying information inquiries.

2.Data warehouse

The information warehouse is portion of the informations purveying map. It could be described as a large depositary. Data warehouse must supply interfaces that accept dealing informations from different types of dealing treating systems and travel them into the warehouse environment. During this procedure that informations are tested and validated to guarantee that merely high quality informations are accepted.

On the end product side of the informations warehouse, there must be interfaces that allow a user to inquire for informations from the devices ( Personal computers or terminuss ) that he typically use. The information in the warehouse must be structured, so that users can easy obtain replies to their inquiries.

OCF built informations warehouse in 1987. They had selected a combination of IBM? s DB2 relational DBMS, SQL question linguistic communication, and TERADATA database machine to back up the information warehouse.

Few months subsequently they built a information warehouse for the Residential and Commercial Insulation Products division that contained merchandise informations, gross revenues informations, and client informations. After some clip they purchased a larger TERADATA machine and related package, which enabled them to spread out this information warehouse to function the other OCF divisions.

3.The Retail Mercantile establishment

The construct of a retail mercantile establishment came from common experience. OCF used the Ana

logy that a warehouse is truly accessed by retail merchants, non by clients.

The retail mercantile establishment is a set of informations that is selected and? packaged? to function the demands of a group of users. There are some of import regulations when the set of informations is packaged.

First and most of import is that merely the informations that are relevant to the concern unit is selected. The information could be summarized harmonizing to the organisational classs and by clip period. Packaging can besides unite different types of informations.

The information into the bundles are little and focussed, so that the user can merely and fast stipulate what is wanted. That decreases the hold in recovering the information.

OCF? s foremost retail mercantile establishment was a profitableness database for one of its divisions. They wanted to be able to look at the profitableness of a merchandise, gross revenues office, or a specific client. The profitableness retail mercantile establishment was a successful, and they developed similar retail mercantile establishments for the other OCF divisions. The retail mercantile establishment enabled OCF to simplify its informations warehouse & # 8211 ; OCF has moved the summarized information and the organisational tabular arraies into the retail mercantile establishments. Some other of import facet was that the retail mercantile establishment made easier the manner by which OCF directors can obtain the informations that they need to pull off the concern.

4.Executive Information System

The Executive Information System ( EIS ) must supply all the information that directors need to place tendencies and supply apprehension of what precisely is go oning in the concern. They besides need the information as fast as possible, because they have to respond fast to the alterations.

The retail mercantile establishments do non incorporate the information that directors need. Rather, the mercantile establishments contain the information from which this information can be created by utilizing some analytical and statistical techniques. The OCF reached the same decision when they have been working on a undertaking to develop an Executive Information System ( EIS ) for one of its senior directors. The gathered information is merely available to those for whom it was created. The information and the procedure by which it was created leave the system.

The OCF started believing about some new sort of construct which could be more effectual in a manner that to return the information to the system to be available for usage by other OCF directors, or to be used once more to make similar information in the hereafter. Therefore they created the information warehouse construct.

The chief thought of the construct was to be another set of databases designed to provide simple and fast entree to the direction information and the procedures used to make it. Furthermore, the information warehouse has to be able to supply the tools to turn this information into presentations and besides to hive away these presentations. The OCF people considered that the necessary tools needed to back up an information warehouse ( such as information warehouse shop compound paperss that may include image, voice, and artworks information ) do non be yet but that they are being developed.