The Information Source model in IFS Business Reporting & Analysis describes a Star Schema model consisting of Facts (transactions) and Dimensions (basic data).
If an Information Source supports Data Mart access, then the necessary storage containers, representing the Facts and the Dimensions, have to be created in the Data Mart. There are two supported Data Mart sources:
A Materlialized View is an object in the Oracle database representing a snapshot table.
Refers to ordinary tables that are loaded with data based on incremental changes in other source tables.
Read more about general concepts
Note: The refresh functionality mentioned only handles Data Mart sources related to Information Sources available in IFS Business Reporting & Analysis. This means e.g. that if there are other Materialized Views in the IFS database that are not related to Information Sources, then they will have to be maintained by other means.
An overview of Business Reporting & Analysis related Data Mart sources can be found in the feature Data Mart Sources in Solution Manager in IEE.
Figure 1:Overview of Data Mart Sources
Activating a Data Mart source means creating the first snapshot.
Note: Oracle Enterprise Edition must be used and the In-Memory option must be enabled to make it possible to enable a Data Mart source for in-memory access
Note: Some special considerations that apply to Data Mart
source MV (Materialized View)
For Materialized View definitions that contains
non-deterministic function calls will lead to that the Materialized View in the
database is considered as having the staleness UNKNOWN.
The reason is that it is not possible to trace changes from functions. A
Materialized View with staleness UNKNOWN will
by default be treated as FRESH, i.e. it will be
marked with a green indicator. This means that Materialized Views with staleness
UNKNOWN will not be refreshed, neither if
ordered manually nor if being part of a scheduled refresh job. As soon as the
main source tables referenced by the Materialized View are modified, the
Materialized View will be marked as not up-to-date,
STALE, i.e. with a yellow
indicator.
If however it is required to treat a Materialized View with staleness
UNKNOWN as not up-to-date, i.e. marked with a
yellow indicator, this is possible by modifying the Business Reporting &
Analysis parameter
Refresh Materialized Views in UNKNOWN state
Use the feature to:
Note: An incrementally loaded source can never get the status UNKNOWN.
These options will only be available if Oracle Enterprise Edition is used and the In-Memory option is enabled.
For a Data Mart source of type Materialized View, two refresh methods can be distinguished. The refresh method is defined by Oracle as a part of the Materialized View framework:
This method means that Oracle can handle incremental update of the Materialized View. It is however very difficult to use this options since it requires pure table access and not view access based on function calls and sub selects.
This method means that the Materialized View has to be reloaded from scratch every time it is refreshed. This method can be used for complex Materialized View definitions. The IFS implementation is based on COMPLETE refreshed Materialized Views.
Note: It is recommended to create Materialized Views with the refresh method COMPLETE and refresh mode DEMAND.
For a Data Mart source of type Incremental there is no refresh method, rather a refresh mode that can be one of the following:
This mode means that all updates of the snapshot table are based on incremental changes in referenced source tables. This leads to a very efficient way of keeping the snapshot table up-to-date.
This mode means that all updates of the snapshot table are complete, i.e. all transactions with respect to defined filter conditions, are transferred ach time a refresh is made.
Read more about special subjects related to administration of Data Mart sources here.
Read more about general recommendations related to refresh of Data Mart sources here.
Read more about incremental load specifics