Operating the Data Warehouse

Introduction

If the BI/reporting functionality is active in your CM infrastructure, you will have to take care of two main components:

• The ConSol CM Reporting Framework (CMRF)
• The ConSol CM Data Warehouse (DWH)

A short overview of a system with reporting functionalities is provided in the current manual in section System Architecture with Reporting Infrastructure. In case you need to know technical details about the CMRF/DWH setup, please read the respective sections in the ConSol CM Setup Manual.

CMRF/DWH administration using the Admin Tool is explained in great detail in the ConSol CM Administrator Manual, section Data Warehouse (DWH) Management. In order to understand reporting in CM, we recommend to read this section first.

A quite detailed explanation of all processes of CM/CMRF/DWH synchronisation is provided in the current manual, in section CM / CMRF / DWH Synchronization.

Short overview of CM components relevant for reporting

Basic principle

The ConSol CM database and the DWH are two separate databases (or database schemes, depending on the RDBMS flavor). The CMRF, a Java EE application, is responsible for transferring the required data. This is based on entries, made by CMRF, in control tables of the DWH database. Please read the ConSol CM Administrator Manual, section Data Warehouse (DWH) Management, subsection TransferModefor a detailed explanation.

In order to run smoothly, the following components have to be up and running:

1. The CM server has to run and to write data into the CM database.
2. The CMRF has to run and has to have access to the DWH database (scheme).
3. The DWH mode has to be set to one of the following values:
   1. ADMIN
      This means that there is no automatic transfer of data from CM to the DWH. The administrator has to start the transfer manually.
   2. LIVE
      This means that the transfer of data from CM to the DWH is performed automatically, on-the-fly.

DWH-specific log files

In order to read the DWH-specific log files, you can either access the file system of the server directly (see section Log files) or you can use the Admin Tool. For the latter, open the navigation group Data Warehouse, navigation item DWH Configuration and Logs. Click the Log button to open the cmrf.log file in the main panel:

You can also check the original log file under the following path:

<JBOSS_HOME>/standalone/log/cmrf.log

Please note that these are the standard paths. You can configure different paths in the configuration files. A detailed description of CM logging and log files is provided in the section Log files.

Usually the log file and/or log panel entries give good hints regarding the initial reason for a transfer failure. If you run into a problem you cannot resolve and you have a maintenance contract with ConSol, please contact our support team.

Open DWH tasks

Use the Admin Tool to see open DWH tasks. They will be displayed in the navigation group Data Warehouse, navigation item Tasks. In the CM database, the tasks are listed in the table cmas_dwh_task.

In the list of DWH tasks, you will find entries (one entry per task) if ...

• the DWH is running in ADMIN mode and the administrator has started an update: all tasks that have to be performed are listed.
• the DWH is running in LIVE mode but the check box Automatic commit of administrative changes has not been checked.
• ticket field, customer field, or resource field annotations have been set to reportable = true and the checkbox Automatic commit of administrative changes has not been checked.

You can mark a task in the list and execute it manually.

If the checkbox Automatic commit of administrative changes has been checked, the tasks will be run automatically by the system.