Introduction to and Aims of the Project : Infocamere and Data Warehousing

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Phebe Adams
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1 Introduction to and Aims of the Project : Infocamere and Data Warehousing Some Background Information Infocamere is the Italian Chambers of Commerce Consortium for Information Technology and as such it is in charge of the gathering, storing and management of public data regarding all Italian businesses. All of these businesses are obliged to submit such information to the Chambers of Commerce to which they subscribe, one for each of the 103 Italian provinces. The Chambers most important data-base, and in all respects the langest and most up-to-date source of information on the economic structure of the Country, is the Business Register. This Register was officially set up within the confines of Law n. 580 of 1993 and is the only completely computerised register in Europe, as it was not the result of the processing of a paper register, since it was not in existence before being set up as a computerised register. The Register contains information that is updated on a daily basis, regarding roughly 5.5 million currently active businesses and roughly 4.5 closed businesses, amounting to a total of roughly 10 million business data statuses. The information in this Register is accessed daily through thousands of Chamber of Commerce computer terminals, as it constitutes the most important source of information for public and private operators seeking official information about prospective clients, suppliers, lists of possible business partners, statistics regarding the distribution of businesses throughout the country, the legal status of businesses or their size. The Aims of the Infocamere Data Warehouse Project Within the setting of a steadily increasing demand for business information there is an ever-increasing demand for value-added information whereby the original bare "data" are transformed into "information", that is into rapidly comprehensible working-tools to which end users may obtain immediate access. The introduction of Datawarehousing techniques into the processing of the information contained in the Chambers of Commerce archives, starting with the Business Register, will thus make it possible for the Chambers to navigate their own data using a tool capable of supplying end users (the businessman rather than the Local Government Authorities) that value-added information so highly in demand to support faster and more efficient decision making processes. On a wider scale, the aim of the Infocamere project is to extend the use of DW to all other Chamber archives (containing information concerning the dishonouring of bills, shares participations, exporters and importers, patents, and much more) in order to complete the development of an integrated system for the analysis and management of all public information managed by the Chambers of Commerce. Main features of a Datawarehouse

2 From a conceptual point of view, the methodological advancement constituted by the introduction of DW lies in the transformation of data management from the mere management of "facts " into the management of "information ", providing grounds to perform a much more forceful and in-depth level of research and knowledge of what is actually going on. In this respect, it is worth noticing that going into depth does not necessarily mean that the level of understanding becomes more difficult: to the contrary, the interpreting of data becomes more immediate while its use becomes faster and more flexible. As regards Infocamere and its DW project, one key-feature is the iterative approach that is fundamental to the construction of a DW: in other words, a DW approach to data management and analysis proves to be extremely efficient in adapting to such continually fluctuating environments as the Chambers data-bases (not to mention the changing of market settings and the needs of the Chambers customers who apply to get the information). One of the strong points in favour of any system based on DW is the capacity to bear "ad hoc queries": in other words, it allows for data explorations that do not proceed according to any specific plan but are tailored according to the specific needs of each end user. To put it another way, the user is free to analyse data in a variety of ways, without being necessarily confined to a limited series of predefined possibilities. For the Chambers of Commerce, the adoption of a set of datawarehousing tool will signify the advancement to a highly innovative working environment characterised by a strongly active role to be carried out by the Chamber's computer operator, who must respond to customers requests on a daily basis. Within this new research and data processing environment, the operator will no longer have to operate as a mere "extension to the machine". To the contrary, thanks to DW tools, his/her active participation in the processing and analysis of information will lead to the creation of more valid output of heightened quality that are not only the result of a profound knowledge of the data themselves, but most of all the combination of a deeper knowledge of it and of the best ways of integrating it. In this perspective, we are dealing with the transformation of people jobs from the simple knowledge of standard procedures acquired by rotelearning (that are usually vacuous and stimulate very little incentive from the point of view of professional growth) into a situation of active participation in the decisional procedures concerning the generating of output that result from discussion and analysis with the person he/she is talking to at that moment. Applications The first prototype procedure to be undertaken with DW tools at Infocamere will be the one currently in use at Chambers of Commerce for the production of lists of businesses contained into the Business Register. It is a data-processing application that extracts a range of

3 business anagraphical information on the basis of a series of filters imposed by the user (usually dimensional categories of companies or their distribution throughout the country). Starting from here, all applications will be realised and deliveved within the new Intranet set-up created especially for the Chambers system, wich will find the new applications far simpler and faster to use thanks to the web interface graphic features. What a DW consists of A DW structure may be described as having three main components : the original data-base (in this case the Business Register) a structured data-base that is constantly updated containing concise information originating from the original archive, linked to contents indices for the main data-base requests and navigation interface into the data-base that are connected to the system. Activities connected to management and to the use of such a system may be concisely divided up into two stages: back-end (updating of the structured data-base) and front-end (requesting into the archives). The organisation of data and its updating : the back-end stage The back-end stage consists of the updating from time to time of information that came originally from the main archive, and that is destined to make up the first level archive (the one that has been defined as the "structured data-base"). All software products that allow a DW to be set up possess this component, which constitutes an essential part of the procedure, as poor updating of a DW heavily jeopardises the interface working performance (front-end) regardless of what type this last may be. Within the DW that Infocamere is setting up, the back-end stage will operate on the data-base charts of the Business Register, gathering the most important information about roughly 10,000,000 individual situations, which will supply to the DW data-base. The project foresees an initial instalment phase, during which the DW data-base will be created, followed by the launching of a system of updating using information imitally to be gathered on a weekly basis. Judging by the Business Register current activity, it is estimated that around 20,000 updatings of data occur daily, making about 120,000 updatings during the Chambers of Commerce s six-day working week. On the basis of these "generating" operations performed on the concise data-base, the DW software will then activate the creation of structures containing indices as well as a series of standardised statistics charts concerning: consistence (numerousness of cases in the archive) quality (information about the quality of the archives) distribution (territorial and economical analysis)

4 These statistical charts may be directly accessed by the user through static "html" pages (that is, without having necessarily to request processing from the data-base). The extraction of data : the front-end stage As indicated above, the " front-end " is the part of DW that deals with the exchange of information with the user, in other words the user interface. In the case of the applicatons being set up by Infocamere, and particularly for the first "prototype" product of business lists, a web-server architecture will be adopted that will allow users to send queries using their web "browser". A DW component installed on the web-server devoted to Chambers of Commerce applications will communicate with an application-server residing within the environment hosting the first level data-base (the concise data-base). It is estimated that it will be possible to navigate on the basis of approximately 50 dimensional variables of the subject "business/company", the most important of which may be classified as follows: structural variables: Sections to which companies belong within the Register, Qualification of businesses territorial variables: Province, Town Council, Postal Code characteristics variables: juridical status, ISTAT (Central Institute of Statistics) code for businesses temporal variables: date of subscription, dates of closure of businesses, of winding-up or of bankruptcy of businesses dimensional variables: Capital, Employees The following concrete example may help to demonstrate how the process works. Starting from his/her browser, the user selects the service "Lists" from the main menu on the Home Page of the Chambers web-site. This is a static page that leads into the production of lists system, following the verification of the user identity. After the authentication data (User-id and Password) have been provided, the user will access to a page allowing for the definition of what he/she wishes to select to build his/her query: in other words, the "dimensions of the navigation". Moving from his/her choices, the user will be able to navigate and then "drill down" into the data-base to add more options to the query like, for example, the codes for Provinces, the legal status, the amount of capital, the number of employees, or the territorial distribution, etc. At any stage, the user can then select from the output chart these obtained the categories that interest him/her in particular, or else he can go back to the previous selection in order to reorganise the input criteria he/she wishes to use to navigate.

5 By following the visualisation process of the output charts obtained on the basis of each selection from the various "dimensions" of the DW, the user may then get to the definition of a group of representative items from which he/she may then request the extraction of information in the form of a list of businesses. Some estimates for full capacity running. Once the Chambers DW system is running in a routine fashion, it should be able to ensure a minimum number of operations, as shown in the chart below: 50,000 annual requests for the extraction of list of businesses 15,000,000 extractions of names from selections carried out 50,000 requests for statistics relating to the economical and territorial distribution of businesses 10,000 requests concerning analyses relating to the starting up and closing down of businesses.

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