Best Practices for SAP BI using DB2 9 for z/OS - IBM Redbooks

11.1 Background
To be more competitive in a dynamic business environment, large global
companies are focused on improving their ability to identify and react to business
changes. This responsiveness demands that operational personnel are able to
quickly identify any developing business issues. These include detecting an
inventory problem, identifying fraudulent purchases in real time, or identifying
preferred customers at every point of contact. This requires that personnel
across the lines of business have the correct information, at the correct time, to
make the right business decisions. To satisfy this need for information, business
intelligence solutions are evolving to become more proactive, delivering
actionable information to the front lines of business operations.
To meet the challenges of an operational business intelligence environment,
System z offers many advantages to ensure information availability for all. The
System z environment is able to manage workloads from thousands of users,
while securing data from external and internal threats, a critical capability for
every company. System z environments offer a highly reliable, available, and
manageable DB infrastructure to support huge query workloads that are typical
of an operational BI environment.
Leveraging a mainframe's self-management characteristics, system workload
control, and overall cost efficiencies can significantly improve the business value
of a solution. With its unique scalability and security, combined with its data
availability characteristics, System z provides the capability to seamlessly create
an operational BI environment that meets the business requirements of today's
24/7 economy.
Combining these strengths with the performance enhancements of BM Systems
Solution for SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator, companies have the ability to
leverage the strengths of the mainframe, with the performance and flexibility
benefits of a turnkey solution, meeting the demanding requirements of today's
business climate.
11.1.1 Project overview
In support of the operational BI requirements of a business, IBM and SAP
worked together to demonstrate the extreme scalability possible with this fully
integrated solution. This project incorporated System x Blades that provide fast
parallel processing of queries, complemented by System z and DB2 for z/OS as
the secure, high availability data repository for the volumes of customer's
InfoCube data. System p was used to support the SAP BI application software.
2 http://www.wintercorp.com/
228 Best Practices for SAP BI using DB2 9 for z/OS