In-Depth

A closer look at Kalido

• By Lana Gates
• November 1, 2004

The Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse is part of the Kalido Data Warehouse Lifecycle Management Suite and was built on the premise that the business model is constantly changing. Because of this approach, the warehouse can provide consistent management information in very complex, multinational enterprises, such as at Unilever Latin America.

The warehouse addresses seven key areas in data warehousing: adaptive services, corporate memory management, business model management, warehouse management, star schema generation, mart management and federation management.

Version 8 of the product, announced in September, adds three features: greater scalability, a business modeler and a new module, the Master Data Manager.

At the heart of the warehouse is the Kalido Adaptive Services Core, an open data repository for storing transaction, reference and business meta data. It is designed to handle business change and diversity in coding standards. This core can hold all data, in all structures, across all scenarios, making it possible for software developed by Kalido and third parties to integrate, store and manage data consistently.

To aid in corporate memory management, the warehouse separates transaction data from reference data. It then goes a step further and separates the reference data from its data model, storing the information in a neutral format. This process allows the reference data or the business model to be changed in isolation. It also enables multiple models to co-exist.

When a change occurs in the business model held in the data warehouse, the corporate memory management area notifies users of the effect this change will have on reporting. Data administrators have a clearer view of how data changes will affect other areas of the business.

The warehouse includes tools for dimensional modeling and segmentation of business entities and business meta data. It also features an open architecture that allows for the use of models created with external tools.

For global organizations such as Unilever, linking data warehouses together is an important part of keeping a handle on business. The Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse makes this easier through what it calls federation. It allows separate Kalidos in different geographic locations to link to others so that local, regional and global operations can share business models and reporting definitions.

What about changes to business models in a federation? Kalido makes that feasible by simply moving XML documents around with no involvement from the database administrator. The model at the destination warehouse will dynamically rebuild itself to reflect the new structure.

The warehouse includes numerous pre-built facilities for better management, such as data integrity validation, transaction archiving and summarization, transaction and reference data loading, and the ability to track and manage data loads schedules, among others.

An entry-cost license is $350,000; maintenance is $60,000 annually.

Please see the following related story: Unilever tangos to Sinfonia in Latin America by Lana Gates.