Very Computer

1. Management Information vs Audit Information

In other threads there has been discussion about whether OLAP or similar
tools should allow update of the 'original' databases.  The implication
is that this is required, or, at least, desirable.

Why update transactional databases?  These have been set up to handle the
necessary but boring job of satisfying the auditors, which they can only
do if update is strictly controlled.  The whole reason for OLAP is that
these databases are of very limited use for analysis.  It is a common
sight in offices to see vast printouts from these databases presented to
managers as 'information', but which are useless.  So analysts should not
wish to touch these databases, but rather should wish to be able to set
up their own databases, and should be demanding this ability off their DP
departments.  Currently the relational orthodoxy has effectively stymied
any such initiative.

Yet there are simple forms of database that managers can understand, and
there are simple ways to download the 'management' data from relational
databases into these 'OLAP' databases (this usually means summary data
skimmed from the top).  The data that is downloaded should have no need
to be updated from the relational database, so redundancy is irrelevant.  
All that is relevant is how easy it is for managers to inspect and update
the new friendly management databases.

We sell one form of such a database, and in only one case in six years
has there ever been a requirement to push data back into a RDBMS.  In
that case, the analysis was an integral part of the transactional
processing, so our tool was moving into areas of RDBMS territory where
traditional methods were not appropriate.  The inexorable spread of our
methods in that particular application may well mean that in the long
term they will throw away the relational approach for even
'transactional' data.  However this was where some genuinely
sophisticated analysis is being done as an intrinsic part of the sales
process.  There are very few sites of that type.  
Bill Cawley, Ambit Research

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