InfoSphere Warehouse

Delivering a single user interface, InfoSphere Warehouse leverages the Eclipse-based Rational Data Architect (RDA) modeling functions to form the InfoSphere Warehouse Design Studio, a development environment for BI solutions. The Design Studio integrates the following tasks in a unified graphical environment:

• Physical data modeling
• DB2 SQL-based warehouse construction
• OLAP cube modeling
• Data mining modeling

Using a single user interface, designers can connect to source and target databases, reverse-engineer physical data models, build DB2 SQL-based data flows and mining flows, set up OLAP cubes, and prepare applications for deployment to runtime systems.

Physical Data Modeling

Within the Design Studio, you can use Eclipse-based technology to create, modify, and generate DDL for physical data models. A physical data model is a database-specific model that represents relational data objects (for example, tables, columns, primary keys, and foreign keys) and their relationships. You create physical data models for source and target databases and staging tables for data warehouse applications. Generated DDL statements can be deployed directly to a database server via the Database Explorer.

You can also use Eclipsed-based technology to compare data objects or analyze impact and dependencies. You can compare objects or models and highlight the differences. Then you can copy changes between the compared resources. You can navigate and merge structural differences between data objects, merge properties changes between data objects, generate DDL for changes that you made, and export the structural differences to an XML file on the file system.

You can also analyze the impact and dependencies of a data object to determine how the object affects or is affected by changes to other objects in the model.