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System is Server to Two Masters:
Replication Allows for Simultaneous Entry and Analysis of Data

by Roseanne White

Jim Tallant's mission is to create what he describes as a "robust'' computer system that meets the growing reporting and analysis demands of a Colorado risk retention group.

To attain this goal, he had to balance the needs of two types of system users so they wouldn't cause each other frustrating delays.

Database replication is proving to be a cost-effective solution to that problem, according to Mr. Tallant, the management information systems project manager. That approach allows anything that occurs in a database to be automatically distributed from a main source to multiple sources at predetermined intervals (see story, page 3).

Aurora, Colo.-based National Home Insurance Co. (A Risk Retention Group) has data entry staff, called online transaction processing users, who demand availability and performance from the system, Mr. Tallant said. The online analytical processing users, who are managers and executives studying corporate information and trends, require sophisticated reporting and summarization capabilities from the system, he said.

"If you have both those kinds of users on the same database, many times there's a constraint on server resources,'' Mr. Tallant said. Executives don't want to be told that "the report is going to take X minutes longer because we have high volume right now.''

After a survey of approaches pointed to database replication as the one best suited for the risk retention group's number of computer system users -- an anticipated 50 by mid-1999 -- a separate reporting server was dedicated to those doing data analysis and reporting. The online transaction processing database functions as the main database.

Now, when someone is entering data into the system, it is written into the OLTP database, and every two minutes it is replicated to the OLAP database using Microsoft SQL Server database technology. All data is replicated, so the only difference between databases is that the OLAP copy is a read-only copy, meaning the reader cannot change it.

The risk retention group has implemented the database replication approach in conjunction with the selection of a new risk management information system. Prior to the RMIS selection, National Home's MIS staff spent seven months assessing its requirements by documenting its business processes and studying work flows. The risk retention group ultimately selected DORN Technology Group Inc.'s RISKMASTER system.

In August, Livonia, Mich.-based Dorn helped National Home launch a pilot installation of the RISKMASTER system, with several workstations set up in a conference room.

National Home is now using Dorn programs to reformat its claims, events, reserves and adjuster data so that the data can be entered into the RISKMASTER system.

While other priority projects at National Home have delayed going live with the RISKMASTER system beyond the pilot program, database replication has been up and running for several months.

The replication is really transparent to users, Mr. Tallant said. Dorn spent one week training the risk retention group's database administrators. Training "was not a huge matter, but not a trivial matter,'' Mr. Tallant said.

"The main difficulty in the whole matter is getting the databases synchronized before replication,'' he said. Synchronization, a preparatory step to replication, involves ensuring that two or more databases are exactly the same before the process of automatic distribution of the data at regular intervals occurs.

Dorn wrote a complex program to synchronize the databases, Mr. Tallant said. When a server goes down, precautions must be taken to ensure that the servers remain synchronized. "Now that the script is written, it's not the hurdle that it was,'' he said.

Before settling on database replication, National Home considered building a data warehouse. Database replication offered a more cost-effective solution that was easier to implement, according to Mr. Tallant.

Data warehousing generally requires a more complex design because, rather than distributing transactions that occur during the workday, it involves either enabling the database to perform certain analyses on data before or after storing it, or simply storing the data in bulk, according to Mr. Tallant.

Mr. Tallant said the cost of implementing database replication really boiled down to the cost of staff time, the incurred costs from the consultants and some minor overhead to maintain the duplicate database. National Home already licensed Microsoft SQL Server software, so all that was needed was the additional server.

Mr. Tallant sees no real downside to database replication. "We have so much functionality and so much depth,'' he said.