Owens Corning Case :: essays research papers

Owens Corning Case1. entropy ProvisioningOCF conceptualizes the principal IS outturn activities that produce value for the company as transaction processing, entropy provisioning, and culture delivery. info provisioning manages the inventory of information and schooling, using relational entropybase management systems and a data dictionary and data catalog. Transaction processing stores only the certain data necessary to provide the status of current operations. Data provisioning receives, stores, and manages on the whole validated transaction data from transaction processing. It also provides data ski binding to transaction processing and information-to-information delivery when requested. Data dictionary and data catalog keep way of what data exists, where it is stored, what it means, and who has authority to access it. That helps data provisioning to foster the data and to provide access to data and information to those who need it.Data provisioning stores the organizat ional structure regulations in tables in its database, so these regulations can be changed without any difficulties when management decides to modify the organization.OCF created two relational databases to support data provisioning one to support transaction processing and another to support information delivery. They used for transaction processing engineering IBMs DB2 running on the mainframe, designed to process high transaction volumes fast. For the information delivery technology they used a TERADATA database elevator car - a combination of hardw be and package that is optimized for answering information questions. 2.Data warehouseThe data warehouse is parcel of the data provisioning function. It could be described as a big depository. Data warehouse must provide interfaces that accept transaction data from incompatible types of transaction processing systems and move them into the warehouse environment. During this process that data are tested and validated to assure tha t only high quality data are accepted.On the output side of the data warehouse, there must be interfaces that allow a user to ask for data from the devices (PCs or terminals) that he typically use. The information in the warehouse must be structured, so that users can easily obtain answers to their questions. OCF built data warehouse in 1987. They had selected a combination of IBMs DB2 relational DBMS, SQL query language, and TERADATA database railway car to support the data warehouse. Few months later they built a data warehouse for the Residential and Commercial Insulation Products division that contained product data, gross revenue data, and customer data. After some time they purchased a larger TERADATA machine and related software, which enabled them to expand this data warehouse to serve the other OCF divisions.