| # Architecture Infor ION Business Analytics offers users a quick way to implement an advanced business intelligence environment for their ERP system. Business Analytics includes the most common metrics required by business users for Quality Testing analysis and reporting, making it easier to monitor daily tasks. Using Business Analytics, you can accomplish the process of extracting, transforming, and loading data from an ERP system into a BI environment. The Infor ION suite automatically handles the communication between the modules and the storage data in the Business Vault. The Business Vault is the central staging area and an ERP system can be connected to the vault using the standard ION connectors, custom-built ION connectors, or the point-to-point integrations. When an ION connector is used, information corresponding to each transaction, posted on the ERP system, is converted to a standardized XML file, called a BOD (Business Object Document). The BOD is sent to the Infor Business Vault via ION Connect. The information is stored in a raw data format and is automatically transformed to a relational schema, using a transformation process known as 'Shredding'. This data is used to create star schemas from the relational schema. The Import Master creates multidimensional hyper cubes running on the Infor ION BI OLAP Server. Based on the cubes, the dashboards, reports, and analytics are provided using the Infor ION BI Application Studio which runs on Mingle (Workspace) or a standalone application. Various dashboard types are provided based on the user requirements, such as presentation oriented high-level overviews or optimized dashboards. |