414 Solving Operational Business Intelligence with InfoSphere Warehouse Advanced Edition
12.1 Challenges to maintaining an operational
warehouse
In today’s business environment, one method that companies use to maintain or
increase profitability is to continually drive down costs. This usually translates to
accomplishing more with fewer resources. When these aspirations are applied to
the data warehouse environment, companies want to store larger amounts of
data preferably on the same amount of storage, or maximize the performance of
their hardware. Or even to reduce the number of administrators required to
maintain the solution.
Therefore, the pressure on a database administrator to achieve these goals
never diminishes. As such, DBAs must introduce and use a range of tools if they
are ever to meet these targets. Optim Configuration Manager is one such tool
that IBM offers to assist DBAs in improving their efficiency, while also helping
them understand their complex environment.
In a production environment, it is critical that a database structure remains
efficient by reducing the risk of performance degradation or more importantly,
preventing system failure. There are many reasons for failures to occur, from
unregistered system changes to uncoordinated application updates. Whatever
the reason, these types of production issues can be costly to a company, not only
in system downtime and lost production, but also in damage to the reputation of
the company.
An additional benefit of implementing Optim Configuration Manager is the
capability to help maintain an efficient database structure and thus reduce the
risk of these types of failures.
12.2 InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager
IBM InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager is an advanced database
management tool from the Optim family of applications that is used to assist
organizations and database administrators in the performance of their roles. The
tool can be purchased either individually from IBM or in a more cost-efficient
solution as part of Infosphere Warehouse Advanced Edition.
The key role of InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager is to provide a central
store and easy-to-use web interface for discovery, storage, and management of
database and client configuration information. This type of information can
include, for example, host names, IP addresses, user IDs, and DB2 client
versions details.