Data Warehouse Storage Engine
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This topic describes processes used within the Data Warehouse Storage Engine.
Data Warehouse Storage processes
The Data Warehouse storage engine provides the following storage processes for loading data into the Data Warehouse:
Summarization
You use summarization to summarize user, campaign, transaction, and catalog data from the Commerce Server database when you run the Web server log import DTS task and the Report preparation DTS task. Summarizations transform raw data in the Commerce Server database into information in the Data Warehouse that you use to analyze user activity on your Web site. You do this by totaling and counting the related raw data.
For example, 1,000 records of single hits on a particular page, on a particular day, are summarized into the information that the page had 1,000 hits on that day. You can use this information to make decisions that will increase traffic on your Web site.
Schema Management
You use schema management to modify the Data Warehouse schema as needed during the import process. For example, if you add a new property to the User Object profile definition and mark it as exported, the Profile data import DTS task adds a new column to the Data Warehouse schema when user profile data that contains that property is imported.
The following table lists the import process and describes the schema changes the Data Warehouse storage engine makes to the Data Warehouse schema.
Import process |
Data Warehouse schema change |
|---|---|
Web log file |
Query strings are added to the schema. |
Profile |
Profile properties are added to or removed from the schema. |
Product catalog |
Product catalog dimensions are added to or removed from the schema. |
Data Loading
You use data loading to support the loading of high volumes of data into the Data Warehouse, using parallel reads and writes. The storage engine performs writes, high-speed parallel foreign key lookups, surrogate key generation, logical to physical mapping, and with the SQL Server Bulk Copy Program (BCP), high-speed parallel bulk copies.