Exchanging Information
Most enterprise TM1 applications will need to exchange Information with external systems.
With TM1’s TurboIntegrator, you can setup a direct connection (with supported datasources) and move information in and out of TM1 objects at scheduled times or “on demand”.
An alternative to going the “direct route” is using a method referred to as “Information staging”.
Information Staging
Information Staging is the idea of storing pools of information as files in a defined storage area, and then allowing TM1 to process that information when needed. TM1 can also stage infomration of its own, to be consumed by external sysyems using this same method.
Advantages
Some advantages of using an information staging approach would include:
- Groups other than your TM1 team can own the creation and support of the processes that generate the information pools. This most likely will be the enterprise ETL team or, those expert in the source information system (perhaps a data warehouse).
- The TM1 server and the external system remain “detached”. This reduces any possibility of one system impacting performance on the other.
- Information is available for reloading into TM1 if required.
- Information imports from files are faster than directly “linking” between TM1 and a source system.
- Scripts to handle the information imports from files will usually have “simple logic” since the information can be “transformed” into the specific format needed by TM1 by the ETL process.
- Quality assurance is somewhat easier since the information files can be reconciled to the source system and TM1 using user-friendly tools such as MS Excel.
- There is the possibility the staging areas and information can be used by other systems so rather than having multiple systems each query for the same information the information is created once and reused.
Of course, consideration will need to be given for things like:
- Permissions – which users and processes will have access to the staging area and information?
- Archival and retrieval – how long will you retain the information? Will you archive information when it stales, or just delete it? If you archive it, will you need to and be able to retrieve it?
- Disk space requirements – how much space will be required to hold the information? What about going forward as volume and activity change?
- Contention – is it a possibility that systems that consume the information – for example TM1 – will attempt to access the information during a time that the ETL process is updating the staging area?
In many TM1 implementations, the information staging area will reside on the same machine as TM1 server. In this enviroment, you will need to adjust your space requirements accordingly.
TM1 server machines will need reserved space for:
- TM1 database files,
- TM1 transaction and message logging,
- Physical server machine logging,
- Temporary space for certain TM1 features such “sandboxing”,
- Information staging and
- History or archival storage
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