LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--WhereScape, the leading provider of automation software for modeling, building and extending data warehouses and analytic systems, announced today that West Virginia Network (WVNET), which provides computing and telecommunications services to the state’s higher education system, rebuilt an Oracle-based data warehouse and 50 crucial reports in three months using WhereScape RED, WhereScape’s flagship automation software. WVNET will now use WhereScape to roll out customized data warehouse solution to 21 state colleges and universities.
In 2010, the Federal Government provided WVNET with stimulus funding to build a data warehouse to measure the effectiveness of a P-20 program, an initiative which extends reach of education KPIs from pre-natal through higher education. WVNET engaged external consultants to deliver the data warehouse to assemble, organize and load the data and a business intelligence tool for reporting and analysis.
After 18 months, stimulus funding ran out at which time WVNET inherited the project—a basic model, ETL and reports for the student management system and financial system. At that time, the tools, design and overall architecture of the solution were reviewed by WVNET which concluded it would be easier to rebuild rather than extend the existing solution architecture.
Complete Data Warehouse Rebuild in 90 Days
With a two-person project team—one experienced in Oracle, the other “green to all things data warehousing”—WVNET recognized it needed developer assistance and initiated a search to find a solution. During its due diligence it found data automation software from WhereScape, which is tightly integrated with the Oracle database platform.
“Immediately upon seeing WhereScape RED in action, we recognized the software contained the capabilities necessary for us to quickly rebuild our data warehouse without the cost and complexity of using an army of people,” said Dana Keith, manager of applications and data warehousing for WVNET.
“Using WhereScape, our developer identified the processing logic that the consultants had implemented—mostly by reading the code—then identified the bugs with the code by looking at the data and iteratively rebuilt the development in WhereScape RED. WhereScape RED enabled our developer to be self sufficient.”
In 90 days, WVNET reviewed and reverse-engineered, debugged, and rebuilt its data warehouse and 50 reports from scratch using WhereScape RED. WVNET used WhereScape to import data from student and financial source systems, apply processing rules to the data and publish the results to WVNET’s Oracle data marts. “WhereScape has accelerated and amplified our output by orders of magnitude,” Keith said. “A week of development in our prior environment can now be done in 30 minutes using WhereScape RED.”
According to Keith, in addition to rolling out customized solutions to its 21 member organizations, WVNET will also extend the current solution with additional subject areas. “We plan to use WhereScape RED to maintain and manage the deployments and customizations,” Keith said. “Our project approach was to build deployable data marts with agility and rapidly get them in front of users in a ‘collaborate and iterate’ approach. We have done that with great success.”
Keith added, “Everything we’ve done with WhereScape RED could be done manually in Oracle, but WhereScape’s metadata management capabilities and user interface make development dramatically faster. To the point where the cost of rebuilding something is trivial and an iterative and agile project approach is not only possible, but achievable even with just two team members,” he said.
WhereScape in Higher Education
WVNET joins Cornell University, Empire State College, University of Mary, University of Washington and Weber State, just to name a few, as higher educational institutions who have adopted WhereScape’s agile and automated data warehouse development solution. “WVNET’s success mirrors many WhereScape higher education customers who are able to build or rebuild a data warehouse quickly with limited staff and budget and deliver value to stakeholders quickly,” said Mark Budzinski, president of WhereScape.
About WhereScape
WhereScape designs, develops, sells and supports WhereScape 3D, the industry’s first data warehouse discovery tool; and WhereScape RED, the industry’s first and best integrated development environment for building, deploying, managing and renovating data warehouses and analytic systems. WhereScape’s products are used in every kind of today’s commercial environment: from normal-form enterprise data warehouses and data vaults, through user access layers and tiers of dependent data marts, to standalone data marts and reporting systems.
More than 700 customers are active and satisfied users of our technologies, and report that with WhereScape’s products they are able to build data warehouses with fewer people, few if any diversions, missed deadlines or unmet user expectations, and in record time: in days or weeks, instead of months or years. WhereScape has offices in Portland, Oregon; Auckland, New Zealand; and Reading, UK. For more information, please visit us.wherescape.com.
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