Features
Multiple Environment Deployment
As the BI backend has become a mission critical asset, it is often needed to have separate environments for development and test, prior to implementing additions and modifications into the live environment. Common scenarios are development-test-live and development-test-QA-live. With the Multiple Environment Deployment feature, you are offered a configuration approach to ease the migration progress across as many environments as you require. Projects are always transferred as a whole, thus you will never again need to worry about forgetting to transfer or change individual tables or packages. All transfers are version controlled and sequence is enforced, to prevent unintended transfers.
Please refer to the Multiple Environments: Deployment Guide document on the support portal for more details.
Compressions
Data compression is to your database what zip files are to the file system. It significantly reduces data storage and disk operations, both leading to improved performance. Storage is commonly reduced by 40-90%, depending of the compression type used: Row or page on staging areas and data warehouse respectively. Performance can often be improved by 20-60% especially on the data warehouse. The data compression settings are fully automated by setting a simple table classification in timeXtender.
* Data compression is available in SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012 and is not supported by all editions of SQL Server.
Partitions
Table partitioning offers the ability to separate the contents of a logical table into separate physical storage units. This can greatly improve performance as only the partition(s) affected by a query, an insert or update operation will be touched. tX2012 manages partitions with a template based approach, which allows easy reuse of partition patterns across multiple tables. When using a partitioned table as the fact table for a SSAS multidimensional cube, tX2012 will even create cube partitions that are aligned with the table partitions.
* Table partitioning is available in SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012 and is not supported by all editions of SQL Server.
Multiple timeXtender Projects
In tX2012 you design and build your data warehouse solution within the context of a project. A project can be considered as a container that holds all the objects such as data sources, staging databases, tables, views, stored procedures, dimensions, cubes etc. tX2012 comes with one project out of the box, but you can add the ability to have multiple projects.
QlikView modeler & script generator
QlikView® is a very popular presentation tool, which allows business users to rapidly build views and dashboards. The back end implementation however very easily gets quite complex and time consuming, due to the need for scripting. Using the tX2012 drag and drop interface, you create QlikView® models ready for import into your QVW documents, thus eliminating the need for any scripting in QlikView®.
The models automatically include surrogate key for composite joins, thus eliminating the need for slow and complex synthetic keys. It uses the resident clause and allows for storage into QVD files for better performance and optionally offers translations to create models in several languages.
The timeXtender QlikView® adapter simply allows you to combine the best of two worlds, providing you agility in both data warehousing and presentation. It gives you all the benefits from scalable Kimball dimensional data warehouses with the world class presentation in QlikView®.
Version Control
Version control, also known as revision control, manages the changes done to a project in tX2012. A project is defined as the collection of objects such as tables, dimensions and cubes but also includes settings for source and destination connections. Version control has two major benefits, serving the purposes of documentation as well as the ability to restore the project to an earlier point in time.
The initial set of objects will be assigned version 1 on the first save of the project. Every subsequent save will be assigned an incremental version number 2, 3, 4 and so on. Each version uniquely identifies the state of the objects as they were at that point in time. A version also identifies the person that made the changes, a timestamp identifying when the changes were made and optionally a description of the changes that were made.
A version of the project is generated both when a project is saved explicitly and when one or more objects are deployed onto SQL Server. The later means that a restore point is automatically generated every time an object such as a table, dimension or cube is created, modified or deleted on SQL Server.
Reverse Engineer Data Warehouse
If you have an existing SQL Server data warehouse, the reverse engineering feature allows you to import tables, views, primary key and foreign key constraints, stored procedures and user-defined functions into the tX2012 meta model. This is especially useful when converting your hand coded data warehouses into timeXtender, and means that you do not have to create and load your data warehouse from scratch to get the benefits of tX2012. It is often used with the reverse engineer feature for SSAS multidimensional that allows you to reuse existing cubes
Reverse Engineer for SSAS Multidimensional
If you have an existing set of cubes, the reverse engineering feature allows you to import the dimensions, cubes, measures, calculations of an Analysis Services database into the tX2012 meta model. This is especially useful when converting your hand coded cubes into timeXtender, and means that you do not have to create your cubes from scratch to get the benefits of tX2012. The reverse engineering feature is also capable of creating a data warehouse based on the Data Source View in the Analysis Services database.
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General Product Features
CubeStore (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Is a secure Cloud-based distribution platform that supports reuse of projects. The CubeStore enables you to reuse your projects as project templates that can be downloaded directly into timeXtender. Once a solution has been downloaded, it can be up and running within hours, and can be customized and extended. Read more about the CubeStore
Watch the video about downloading a template from the CubeStore delivery platform
Documentation (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Fully automated generation of Documentation, including full version control to ensure that the generated documentation corresponds to the deployed version of the project. Comments can be added to all elements in the project. The template can be modified and the documentation comes as a hyperlinked PDF document. The documentation is valid for IT Audit under SOX.
Multi-environment (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- You can deploy solutions across multiple environments such as development, test and production and there's a complete trace of the different versions deployed on each environment.
Trace (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Complete trace of a single entity, both back and forwards, and it works all the way from data source to cube.
Version Control (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Complete version control for every save of a project and every deployment. Each version can be opened individually, and you have the option of rolling back to a prior version.
Graphical design environment - saves 50%-80% of development time
(SQL Server features that are optimized expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- Limits manual coding effort.
- Supports the dimensional modeling approach to data warehousing
ETL and Data Warehouse Specific Features
Built-in rule-based data quality engine (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Enforcement of implicit and explicit primary- and foreign key constraints.
- Enforcment of threshold values.
- Row or value based checkpoints and notifications.
Reverse Engineering (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- You can reverse an existing data warehouse database based on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or newer.
ERP adapters (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- timeXtender provides intelligent connections to Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics AX and SAP R/3. You gain access to application specific information, and you are able to connect to even heavily modified ERP systems. The Microsoft Dynamics NAV adapter supports versions 3.60 to 2009 on both NAV Native and Microsoft SQL Server databases. The Microsoft AX adapter supports versions 3,4, and 2009.
Watch the video about using Dynamics AX as data source
Target based incremental loading (not available with the standard Microsoft SQL Server toolset)
- Support for configurable handling of insert, update, and delete. Configuration takes place on a per table basis. You achieve a signigicant performance boost for data sources w/o native support for incremental load.
Automated performance optimization
(SQL Server feature that is optimized and expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- Hash-bytes
- Compressions: supports row-and table based compression on both staging and data warehouse. Implemented automatically based on table classification. Can be manually configured in advance mode.
Consolidation tables
(SQL Server features that are optimized expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- Visual builder for GL acccounts dimension (balance sheet, income statement).
- Include custom rollup formulas (dimension calculations).
- Generic usage for mapping any structure into reporting format.
Distributed data sources
(SQL Server features that are optimized expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- One selection across identical data sources.
- Maintain multiple identical data sources in one process.
- Add new data sources on the fly.
Incremental loading
(SQL Server features that are optimized expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- Support for numeric and/or datetime based values for inserts and updates.
- Support for dirty reads (to avoid gaps in data caused by lon-running transactions).
- Implemented on a per table bases within minutes.
Indexes
(SQL Server features that are optimized expanded in timeXtender for better performance and ease of use)
- Automatic index creation.