Smooth Processes With Fast DataSmooth Processes With Fast Data

If a hammer is sold today at one of Ace Hardware Corp.'s 5,200 stores, it takes two days before managers at company headquarters know about it. So the hardware chain is implementing an IT system called Eagle Vision that will provide a real-time link from the stores' point-of-sale systems that immediately updates an inventory database at headquarters.

"For the people here at corporate, it will be very enlightening to see sales in the stores close to when they actually happen," says data warehouse architect Mark Cothron. Eagle Vision, which is based on Informatica Corp.'s PowerCenter and PowerConnect technology, is being tested at two Ace Hardware stores and will be expanded to as many as 3,000 within four years.

But getting more up-to-date data isn't the only benefit companies are finding as they experiment with real-time data integration and data-warehouse systems.

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., a satellite radio service that offers more than 100 channels of programming, uses a real-time system to process new subscriptions and commission payments to retailers that sell XM Satellite service and receivers. Retailers send new subscriber and receiver sales information to XM Satellite's operational IT system using EDI and XML files.

Why do this in real time? It's more efficient, says Frank Patry, XM Satellite's VP of IT. Processing those sales in batch mode overnight would strain the company's IT system. "It distributes the workload over a 24-hour period," Patry says. "It really has to do with scalability."

XM Satellite uses Ascential Software Corp.'s DataStage software to extract the sales data from the operational system and load it into an Oracle-based data mart in real time. Several functions depend on that data, such as reconciling receiver sales and subscriber activation data, so retailers such as Best Buy Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. can get commissions for receiver sales when a subscriber activates his or her service. The ability to scale that system will be critical if XM Satellite, which began offering its service a year ago, reaches its goal of more than 4 million subscribers in the next several years.

Meanwhile, data-processing software vendors have noticed the demand for real-time information. SAS Institute Inc. debuted real-time messaging-system adapters for its data-collection, transformation, and storage applications last month, and Group 1 Software Inc. unveiled its DataSight RT real-time data quality software in July. This fall, Informatica will ship PowerCenterRT, a real-time version of its software for building data warehouses.

But the cost and complexity of maintaining real-time data makes it overkill for some situations. Even as vendors make the technology for delivering real-time data more accessible, managers need to consider whether people will be able to put that information to good use. "After a while, too much real-time data becomes noise," Giga Information Group analyst Keith Gile says. "Real-time needs to be judged on its business value rather than on the technology."

XM Satellite Radio, for example, still does batch processing of information about the advertisements and content it broadcasts, Patry says, because the company sends out ad billing and content-royalty payments based on that data on a periodic basis.