CC-97-130 DATA WAREHOUSING ON WINDOWS NT

Description:

Using a newly evolving operating system such as Windows NT involves risks within a manufacturing environment. Shell employees asked two specific questions as NT evolved in the last few years. Will the operating system be reliable for 24x7 coverage? Does it provide redundancy? On the other hand, there are associated benefits for each new operating system. With NT, these benefits are tighter security and more flexible networking. We have seen small pilots in the early stages of NT evolve to the preferred server platform. NT has grown from application areas of standalone database servers and individual user applications to implementation as the key networking infrastructure backbone for desktops and the primary operating system backbone for custom software development prqjects. Some applications areas in which we at Shell have used NT are: (1) data warehousing for financial, procurement, and marketing data; (2) stock accounting; (3) databases for many custom development applications (i.e.. Operator Job Tracking, Product & Process Definitions and Project Engineering Tracking); and (4) database and application servers: and (5) networking infrastructure backbone for enterprise applications (i.e., MS Exchange). At Shell NT servers provide end-user access to financial, procurement, marketing, and production operations data. For the financial, procurement, and marketing users, data is extracted from disparate enterprise point solutions and arranged into a uniform, relational format for data warehouses on NT servers. Plant personnel utilize a variety of reporting tools to create their personalized reports where the enterprise point solutions retain no more than 12 months of data, including Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, and Crystal Reports. Data warehouses retain five or more years of historical data for trend analysis. Project engineers at plants now have the necessary data available to manage their costs. For cost trending analysis, users can summarize and drill down the costs based on different parameters, which aids in managing costs associated with their specific area of responsibility as well as forecasting.