OSS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MIDDLEWARE (ASP.NET/3.0) 0501/86 APPLICATION SPECIFICATIONS, FEATURE SPECIFICATIONS & ILLUSTRATIONS

Transcription

1 OSS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE MIDDLEWARE (ASP.NET/3.0) APPLICATION SPECIFICATIONS, FEATURE SPECIFICATIONS & ILLUSTRATIONS VERSION: ASP.NET (2), V0G1 UPDATED: 4Q/2009 REFERENCE: MIDDLEWARE 0501/ /86 WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 1

2 CONTENT DESCRIPTIONS 1. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS 1.1 PROGRAMMING TOOLS 1.2 DATABASE 1.3 APP S ARCHITECTURE 1.4 HARDWARE ARCHITECTURAL DEPLOYMENT A. HARDWARE DEPLOYMENT BASED ON HA (HIGH AVAILABILITY) B. HARDWARE DEPLOYMENT FOR VOLUMINOUS CONCURRENT LOG-INS C. OVERALL DIAGRAM OF COMBINED APPLICATION AND HARDWARE 2. APPLICATION INTRODUCTION, ARCHITECTURAL TOPOLOGY, SPECIFICATIONS, FEATURES & SCREEN SHOTS DESCRIPTIONS 2.1 INTRODUCTION 2.2 APP S FEATURE SPECIFICATIONS 2.3 APP S SCREEN SHOT ILLUSTRATIONS 3. OSS APPLICATION SERVER AS MIDDLEWARE 3.1 SYSTEM SECURITY IDENTIFY AUTHENTICATION & PARAMETERS VALUE-BASED POLICIES STATE-BASED POLICIES 3.2 AUDIT TRACE & TRACK MANAGEMENT 3.3 LDAP (LIGHTWEIGHT DIRECTORY ACCESS PROTOCOL) / ACTIVE DIRECTORY 3.4 FILE ACCESS RIGHT MANAGEMENT 3.5 APPLICATION SOFTWARE S FEATURED COMPONENT ACCESS RIGHT ALLOCATION WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 2

3 1. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS 1.1 PROGRAMMING TOOLS The application s source codes were written in: A. Microsoft Visual Studio.NET (ASP.NET & VB.NET), B. IIS (.NET Framework 3.5) and C. AJAX. 1.2 DATABASE The App s data warehouse/cube were built upon MS SQL 2005/08 as tier-2 database; where we assume clients front-end applications are run on a separate database as tier- 1 data sources. 1.3 APPLICATION SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE The application s infrastructure is designed in: A. SOA (Services Orient Architecture, details are at Section 2.2 below) which its functions are exposed to the developers as a service; and B. N-Tier: It supports the tier-based hardware (cluster-server) environment for deployment (details are in Section 2.2). As the App s architecture is based on N-tier, its code components (as illustrated diagram below) can be logically split into different tiers of servers. The diagram below depicts the App s N-tier logic whose codes are separated in tier based compartments: WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 3

4 Internal Users External Users Web Tier OSS Enterprise Service Portal / or Client Existing Fixed IP Webpage System Security : OSS Access Control Manager & Session Manager Application Tier OSS Administration Module [Dictionary] Application Components Business Intelligence Report Portal Middleware Application-3 OSS Application Server Authenticatio Authorization RSA Audit Trail BI LDAP Optional Archival Alert Management Work Flow API OSS Data Access Layer (DAL) Database Tier Microsoft SQL Oracle IBM DB2 Other Optional: Second Data Centre For Back-Up + Recovery Back-up Software : External Data Storage Device WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 4

5 1.4 HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE DEPLOYMENTS As the core application s base architecture is based on SOA and N-tier, it supports both the simple single server deployment, or for heavy loading by deploying it at Layer-based hardware (or cluster-server) in its physical deployment. Details are in [Section 1.4.1, and 1.4.3] HARDWARE DEPLOYMENT BASED ON HA (HIGH AVAILABILITY) As the App is designed in N-tier, it supports clients to deploy it in a true 24/7 environment, as features of the High Availability, Failover and Scalability are inherently built in. The High Availability (Failover) and Scalability s capabilities are illustrated with the following hardware deployment. HARDWARE TOPOLOGY: BASIC HIGH AVAILABILITY AT SINGLE-NODE LOCATION Primary Data Centre: Single Logical DNS ` Optional: Hardware Based Load Balancer Web Servers with built-in Network Load Balancer Application Servers Redundant Gigabit Switch (1) Switch for redundancy-1 Database Server (Active Node) Primary Data Storage: SAN/ NAS 1 2 Redundant Gigabit Switch (2) Database Server (Passive Node) Switch for redundancy-2 Internet Service Provider (2 Mbp x 2) Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC): OPTIONAL Load Balancer Web-cum- Application Servers 1 Switch Database Server 2 Remote- Backup SAN/ NAS Server In the event clients intend to scale up the hardware to accommodating more concurrent users (exceeding 100 named users), the design can be scaled up as depicted at s below. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 5

6 1.4.2 HARDWARE DEPLOYMENT FOR VOLUMINOUS CONCURRENT LOG-INS The High Availability (HA) can be achieved thru hardware deployment of up to 32 Web servers, 12 Application Servers and 2 Database Servers at single location as depicted below. This scaled-up design is capable to support up to 5,000 named users at any given time. In the event of Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) is deployed, the number of concurrent users can be extended to 100,000 with 100 database servers. HARDWARE TOPOLOGY AND OVERVIEW: MAXIMUM SCALE-UP AT SINGLE-NODE LOCATION ` Optional: Hardware Based Load Balancer Up to 32 Web Servers with built-in Network Load Balancer Up to 12 Application Servers Redundant Gigabit Switch (1) Primary Data Centre: Single Logical DNS Switch for redundancy-1 Database Server (Active Node) Primary Data Storage: SAN/ NAS 6 7 Redundant Gigabit Switch (2) Database Server (Passive Node) 8 9 Switch for redundancy Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) Internet Service Provider (2 Mbp x 2) Load Balancer Web-cum-Application Servers Switch Database Server 5 6 Remote- Backup SAN/ NAS Server WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 6

7 1.4.3 OVERALL DIAGRAM OF COMBINED APPLICATION SOFTWARE & HARDWARE The following diagram depicts the physical location based logic between hardware and application software, when they are deployed together. TOPOLOGY ON HARDWARE AND APPLICATION SOFTWARE DEPLOYMENT & CONFIGURATION End-Users ` END-USERS Web Servers System Security: Access Control Manager & Session Control Application Server Application Software-1 Application Software-2 Application Software-3 Application Infrastructure Building Block: Access Control, Encryption, Audit Track, Single-Sign_In, SMS, Report Portal & Others Database Server Switch-1 Switch-2 Data Access Layer (DAL) Database Active Node Passive Node SAN/NAS BACK-UP WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 7

8 2. APPLICATION INTRODUCTION, ARCHITECTURAL TOPOLOGY, SPECIFICATIONS, FEATURES AND SCREEN SHOTS DESCRIPTION 2.1 INTRODUCTION The application, OSS Business Intelligence + Report Portal Management System (ASP.NET) v2.0, is an application that comprises of two (2) distinct solutions, the Business Intelligence (BI) and Report Portal. The primary purpose of having both to be bundled together is- it intends to provide the desired features of Portability and Access-any-time to decision-making executives, who would like to access the company s data at any given time and date via a web browser. The application (in short, BI) is a tier-2 application whose purpose is to sifting through the large amounts of data from the tier-1 data sources, which comprised primary data sources from daily operation thru ERP/Accounting/ Sales Order Processing etc. The BI application is to extract (or mine) the pertinent information from them and turning it into knowledge upon which informed strategic business decision can be based. The clear objective of using BI is to track business performance, detect trends, and produce accurate forecasts about the future where businesses hope to turn their wealth of corporate data into competitive advantages. In short, BI eliminates guesswork by providing much more insight into past performance and more accurate prediction of the future conditions. DIAGRAM-1 WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 8

9 Business Intelligence (BI) Architectural Topology: Data connection between Tier-1 and Tier-2 (Biz Intelligence + Report Portal) ` Internet Optional: Hardware Based Load Balancer Web Servers with built-in Network Load Balancer Tier-1 Applications (exp ERP, Accounting, Sales Order Processing etc) Application Servers Redundant Gigabit Switch (1) Switch for redundancy-1 Database Server (Active Node) Primary Data Storage: SAN/ NAS Redundant Gigabit Switch (2) Database Server (Passive Node) Switch for redundancy-2 Data mining process Ethernet Tier-2 Application: BI and Separate Database OSS Business Intelligence (ASP.NET) Database (MS SQL 2005) Application Server Database Server Data-warehouse, Cubes, Analysis Report, Dashboard, KPIs Business Intelligence s Users WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 9

10 2.2 APP S FEATURE SPECIFICATIONS The application, OSS Business Intelligence Management System (ASP.NET/2.0), is designed to support enterprise-grade companies which have tier-1 large amounts of data sources, normally thru their front-end operation related applications (ERP, Accounting, Sales etc), BI is then used to search thru these disparate data source to find patterns for the purposes of forecasting. To illustrate how the BI works in a normal deployment, please refer to the diagram below, Diagram-1, where it described the BI s data mining process that sourced from tier-1 data sources, and from them the application compiles to render the Analysis Report, Dashboard, KPIs and Report Portal. Business Intelligence (BI) Architectural Topology: Data connection between Tier-1 and Tier-2 (Biz Intelligence + Report Portal) ` Internet Optional: Hardware Based Load Balancer Web Servers with built-in Network Load Balancer Tier-1 Applications (exp ERP, Accounting, Sales Order Processing etc) Application Servers Redundant Gigabit Switch (1) Switch for redundancy-1 Database Server (Active Node) Primary Data Storage: SAN/ NAS Redundant Gigabit Switch (2) Database Server (Passive Node) Switch for redundancy-2 Data mining process Ethernet Tier-2 Application: BI and Separate Database OSS Business Intelligence (ASP.NET) Database (MS SQL 2005) Application Server Database Server Data-warehouse, Cubes, Analysis Report, Dashboard, KPIs Business Intelligence s Users A good example of BI is customers who bought this item also bought this, when you are shopping online at Amazon.com, it suggests other items that relevant to the one you are looking (or buying). The system works in this way when you look at a product, Amazon.com s servers will show you other items purchased by other who also purchased the item you are looking at. This kind of pattern matching and trend analysis is being used to increase sales by targeting advertising at specific customers. In addition, its capabilities can be further enhanced thru add-on Report Portal, where both are parts of central management tools, OSS APPLICATION SERVER (ASP.NET), the details are explained in Section 3. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 10

11 Data-warehousing Our application has pre-built in a Data Warehouse repository where it derives the relevant data from clients tier-1 data sources. It contains the raw material for management's decision support system. The critical factor leading to the use of a data warehouse is that a data analyst can perform complex queries and analysis, such as data mining, on the information without slowing down the operational systems. There are many advantages to using a data warehouse, some of them are: A. Data warehouses enhance end-user access to a wide variety of data. B. Decision support system users can obtain specified trend reports, e.g. the item with the most sales in a particular area within the last two years. C. Data warehouses can be a significant enabler of commercial business applications, particularly customer relationship management (CRM) systems. KPI (Key performance indicators) The application has built in the following four (4) KPI templates, assuming that clients are already deploying our OSS based CRM, Financial Accounting, Human Capital Management and ERP: A. Financial Performance A1. Cash flow A2. ROI A3. Financial Result A4. Return on capital employed A5. Return on equity B. Customer B1. Delivery Performance to Customer - by Date B2. Delivery Performance to Customer - by Quantity B3. Customer satisfaction rate B4. Customer retention ratio (year-over-year), (year-compared to 5 yrs ago) C. Internal Business Processes C1. Number of Activities C2. Opportunity Success Rate C3. Accident Ratios C4. Defect Rates (Customer s Return Ratio as compared to total delivery) D. Human Capital Management: Learning & Growth D1. Investment Rate D2. Illness rate WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 11

12 D3. Internal Promotions % D4. Employee Turnover D5. Gender/Racial Ratios DASHBOARD ANALYTICS A dashboard is a visual metaphor of the state and health of the underlying business and the system has built in a dashboard which can be used to display various data into a single page from clients various tier-1 data sources, such as ERP, Sales Order Processing, Good Delivery and so on. Dashboards provide decision makers with a graphical view of performance to help quickly identify opportunity and challenges. They provide a pro-active way of communicating information and trends that might be difficult to see with standard tabular reports. They also help keep all users aligned with key objects by emphasizing the importance of key metrics that reflect strategic goals. Dashboards: Reporting: Standard tabular reports are necessary for looking at large volumes of data and tracking performance. The BI application now is pre-built with many to start and provide the ability to modify and create custom reports that reflect your business. Analytics: Most solutions will provide some capabilities that allow a user to manipulate the data to obtain the answers to specific questions. This can range from drill-down options in dashboards and reports, to more sophisticated forecasting and calculations. One of the clear examples of how the Analytics helps the department heads who require refined reports is from the Sales Organization. One of its many challenges is - A sales organization needed the ability to quickly and easily communicate sales and activity information to the field, but not overload them with hundreds of reports from multiple sources. Furthermore, while sales people only wanted basic account and sales information, sales management wanted to the ability to slice-and-dice the information to uncover trends and better direct their team. REPORT PORTAL WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 12

13 2.3 APPLICATION SCREEN SHOTS 1. MEMBERS LOGIN: This below screen illustrates the general login page. Upon you login, you will be led to either the following screen shots: WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 13

14 If your solution is bundled with the Google World Map, then you will be shown as here. From here, you can choose those business units which you can access by clicking at its location at the map. From here, you can see your summary either at the graphical display or click here Grid and it will lead you to the next screen shot. Grid data s form: From here, you can see the detailed information in grid form. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 14

15 2. LOGIN PAGE WITH NO-GOODLE MAP: Alternatively upon login, you will be led to the following general page which it split into A. Dictionary (or Master Files, which are for the System Administrators) and B. General Application s Modules (which are for users who have been assigned with specific access-rights) The Dictionary section, whose features are catered for System Administrator. The Application Modules section, whose features are only be accessed to users whose roles are assigned with specific access-right (thru App Server s). WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 15

16 3. GENERAL TEMPLATES DASHBOARD: If you are the first time login, then the system will lead you to the Home Page, as shown below. This is the standard dashboard where user can select the prepared templates to display their data at the later s login. You can choose the following pre-determined graphical templates as one of your preferred display mode. Or: Alternatively, you can choose to see your data in grid (like MS Excel & Dynamic Graphs) form as per Pivot Grid s. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 16

17 4. GRAPHICAL TEMPLATES: The system allows users to select a range of templates to render the data sources for displaying options. Step-2: Then you select the graphical template here for your generating your data. If you choose this, please refer to the next screen as 3.1 below. Step-1: You select the data set first here. Step-2: If you choose this, please refer to the next screen as 3.2 below. Screen 3.1: WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 17

18 Screen 3.2: 5. DRILL DOWN CAPABILITY: This screen, further from the five (5) screen shots below, will depict you how the system will give you the drill-down capability. Assuming that over here, there are the region options for you to choose from. Let us choose South East Asia. Please see next screen. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 18

19 You will be given country as further option to drill down. Let us choose [Malaysia]. Then it will give you the options of State as shown below: You will be given State as options here. Pleas see next screen. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 19

20 Assuming we select [Johor Bahru] here. Please see next screen below. It will drill down further into the following screen, which can be split into data and graphical portions: Within the same screen, you will be led to see the data grid portion. As well as you will see the graphical display here. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 20

21 6. DYNAMIC DATA RENDERING: If you want to see the dynamic rendering of data, the system can showcase you the data and graphic at the same page. The dynamics is portrayed thru your data rendering and the graphic will change, in accordance to your data manipulation s. You can manipulate your source of data here. Then the graphics can change, in accordance to your data manipulation s as above. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 21

22 3. OSS APPLICATION SERVER (ASP.NET) - MIDDLEWARE 3.1 APPLICATION SERVER _ FEATURE SPECIFICATION & DESCRIPTIONS You can enhance the core App with the (optional) middleware, OSS APPLICATION SERVER (hereafter App Server), which provides various central management tools for corporate governance, security & risk control, encryption protection and identity management. Following are the brief descriptions of the commonly-available utility services that provided by the App Server: A. SYSTEM SECURITY IDENTIFY AUTHENTICATION & PARAMETERS A.1 VALUE-BASED POLICIES A.2 STATE-BASED POLICIES B. AUTHENTICATION C. AUTHORIZATION D. AUDIT TRAIL & TRACK E. DATA PROTECTION: RSA ENCRYPTION F. ACCESS CONTROL MODULE- FILE ACCESS RIGHT TO APPLICATION COMPONENTS G. LDAP (LIGHTWEIGHT DIRECTORY ACCESS PROTOCOL) AND ACTIVE DIRECTORY H. REVOCATION OF USER ACCOUNT MODULE I. REPORT PORTAL MODULE WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 22

23 3.2 SCREEN SHOTS ILLUSTRATIONS OF OSS APPLICATION SERVER (ASP.NET) A. System Security The [General Parameter Setting] tag that allows System Administrator to remotely configure various log-in parameters for each user. B. System Audit Trail Module It allows System Administrator to keep tracks each user s log-in activities (access, view, data entry, edit, print and others) where the system tabulates the user activities in Date, Time, Action, Field he/she accessed and others. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 23

24 C. System File-Access Right Allocation Assigning specific access right on each file to each user, in accordance to the user s role and responsibility. D. System Feature-Access Right Allocation. This class-specific (Object Oriented) feature allow system administrator to allocate Access Right in check-box whose features will be accorded to approved users. WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 24

25 [OPEN SPECTRUM SOLUTION] 1. The above information is correct at the time of this article went to print and release on the OSS website. 2. OSS reserves the absolute right to alter and change any of them at any given time without notifying the installed clienteles; 3. For most updated information on the said application, please contract your nearest OSS authorized resellers or logon to for contact; and 4. For reporting of error and mistakes at the above article s, please send your message to WHITE PAPER BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PAGE 25