Applications Software Packages

1. Applications Software Packages You are more likely to contact Application Software Packages than write software. In this lecture we will be looking at the components, objectives of 2 major packages • SAP (R/3) • Oracle Financials

2. Applications Software Packages However, before we do that, you need to be aware of the rapid increase in the number, and use, of mobile devices The integration or convergence of Internet technologies such as • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) • Extensible Markup Language (XML) • Web application servers • Wireless Application protocol (WAP) has made it practical to extend Enterprise Resource Planning information to mobile users with a wide range of physical platforms

3. Applications Software Packages This in turn has opened up the way for people to use advanced systems (such as SAP) - this ‘leverage’ increases the existing IT infrastructures and increases its value by allowing access to more timely information through ‘new’ e-business channels An e-business channel is a path to an end user. The channels include WAP, B2B, Internet, Palm VIIs This does raise a problem - how familiar are these ‘extended users’ of SAP software ?

4. Applications Software Packages There are 2 major forms for connectivity models • connected • intermittently connected They are self defining.

5. SAP ? So what is SAP ? Systems, Applications, Products in Information Processing SAP Attributes - Integration, (which means connection of modules) - Flexibility - Real time - On line

6. Applications Software Packages SAP is one of the ‘re-engineering’ packages mentioned in a previous lecture SAP had considerable success with their software but as many users and developers found, the increasing awareness and use of the Internet, e-commerce, B2B and other devices led SAP to re-engineer SAP There was also a shift in emphasis - market share became more dominant than cost efficiency.

7. Applications Software Packages Front-office sales automation and Customer Relationship Management emerged - and very rapidly SAP commenced restructuring - to serve specific industries with deeper domain expertise in sales, consulting services and product development and to fully embrace or utilise the Internet Why ? - because the market place had altered.

8. Applications Software Packages There is now an infrastructure system which can / will handle • the recording of transactions • extending this to the physical handling of goods • valuation of transactions • financial settlement among the Companies involved and the customers • customer information

9. Applications Software Packages What ‘information’ is likely to be required ? • The last time customers attended a seminar or company briefing • The complete record of each customers order history • Details of locations of each customers offices - where they are, how many staff, goods handled, … • Organisation chart of each of the customers and their satellite offices • Product information • Mission statement • Customer deductions, promotions, marketing programs and of course keep this up to date

10. Applications Software Packages Remember that this is ‘Solution Software’ It is not a specific solution for each customer - it is the availability of software which each customer can interact with via a variety of Web interfaces and browsers

11. Applications Software Packages In the following overheads, there will be a brief outline of some of the features/uses of SAP and this will be introduced by a commercial approach to • ‘commodity production’ which means availability and low costs, • and custom creation - (perfect fit and customer loyalty) Many industries accept ‘custom orders’ only.

12. Applications Software Packages SAP R/3 has potential to design applications with • variable bills of materials (BOM) • flexible manufacturing processes This permits the design of a variety of product offerings • Configure to order • Build to order • Engineer to order order types.

13. Applications Software Packages A model contains 3 major elements • Classification • Bills of material • Rules Classification is the most important underlying data structure • all rules refer to classification data • efficient rule design and the ability to maintain rules depends on good classification system design • changes to the classification system will have a major effect on change management

14. Applications Software Packages Class typing : AN R/3 class type must be assigned to each class Class Hierarchy : Many class are required to describe the range of materials or objects which are being modelled for a new Sales order Creation (SCE). An example of this is a finished product such as a motor vehicle which requires many parts, products, materials to build a complete model which works for both sales and manufacturing (a ‘used-in’ ….). A product could be an electrical or electronic component such as the engine management system

15. Applications Software Packages Bills of Materials define the master data structure for the parts which manufacturing will use to build a product Variant BOM structures will allow for a bill of material to be created for each customer-requested configuration (as in special features or accessories to a vehicle).

16. Applications Software Packages Rule design The foundation of Rules are the Bill of Material and Classification Good design of BOMs and Classifications enable efficient rules These assist in determining a correct BOM for the product Constraints are declarative dependency rules

17. Applications Software Packages Configuration technology is used in computing, cat manufacturing, telecommunications as well as loans, medical equipment, engines, electronics Personal finance, home improvement projects, company benefits packages are also the subject of applications Reasons for implementing this technology ? Increase in sales Better assistance in product options Increased customer satisfaction Lower returns of ‘unacceptable’ products Reduction in cost of sales

18. Applications Software Packages The previous overheads were based on the use of SAP as an example of what could be achieved in a dynamic assembly line SAP was the product responsible for all item, product and assembled details calculations of time and costs classification and modeling of the finished product variable modelling controls a wide range of ‘personal’ aspects maintaining the module data bases

19. Oracle Financials • Now we are going to ‘pull apart’ the Application Package from Oracle. • And see what its components are, and also • See how they communicate and • What they communicate about • Another possible title is ‘The Anatomy of Oracle Financials’

20. Oracle Financials The correct title for this package is ‘Oracle Financial Analyser 11i’ It is licensed and its licence fee is approximately $A2200 per named user There is another package required - Express Server

21. Oracle Financials The minimum Operating Systems on which this package will run are • Windows NT4.0 with service pack 3, 4 or 5 • Solaris 2.6 or 2.7 Windows NT Server Hardware Configuration • Dual Processor Pentium Pro • 256Mb memory • 512 Mb paging file (2X physical memory)

22. Oracle Financials Sun Solaris hardware: • Dual UltraSparc 200MHz • 1 Gb memory • 256 swap space Windows Clients : Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT4.0 Pentium 133 32Mb RAM

23. Oracle Financials Web Products: Web Browsers :- Netscape Communicator 4.61 and 4.7.x Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 with JVM 5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 with JVM 5 Web Servers :- Oracle Application Server 4.0.8.1, 4.0.8.2 for NT and Unix Oracle WebDB 2.2 Apache 1.3.9 Netscape Enterprise Server 4.1 Microsoft IIS 3.0 and 4.0

24. Oracle Financials There are 2 modules in the financials : Oracle Financial Analyser (OFA) Oracle Sales Analyser (OSA) They are prebuilt business intelligence applications which use the Oracle Express Server as their multi-dimensional On Line Application Processor (OLAP). The previous version of this software was 6.3, which was released in November, 1999

25. Oracle Financials OLAP servers store data in multidimensional arrays (sometimes called cubes) and these arrays copy the baselines by which managers analyse data. If we look at statistical measures, such as revenue, costs, and units sold, an OLAP multidimensional array will organise this data by business properties such as : • time period • product • customer • location

26. Oracle Financials There is a new type of DBMS called a main memory database (MMDB). This holds the entire database in the computer’s main memory - the advantage being exceptionally high query request response (there is one in Windows 2000 - (IMDB)) One of the requirements of Decision Support Systems is that of On Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) Relational databases are used in many commercial environments

27. Oracle Financials There is therefore a need to have the Relational Databases capable of holding large amounts of data. This has a negative impact on processing time - and of course DSS applications required much data The ‘solution’ is to have tools to import, integrate, and populate the data warehouse with operational data Most of the relational data-loading tools perform load operations in batch mode - but this requires that the source and target database must be locked

28. Oracle Financials A technique known ROLAP provides advanced decision support capabilities which are scalable to a complete enterprise - and is a logical choice for those companies which have RDBMS for their operational data. This is where we see the ‘dimensions’ appear Multidimensional online analytical processing (MOLAP) extends OLAP functionality to multidimensional database management systems (MDBMs) (more processes)

29. Oracle Financials An MDBMS uses special techniques to store data in matrix form n-dimensional arrays. Many of the techniques used are derived from engineering fields such as Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and geographic information systems MDBMS users ‘see’ data (or a better term is ‘visualise’) as a 3 dimensional cube - known as a data cube. The location of each data value in the cube is a function of the x, y and z axes in a 3 dimensional space

30. Oracle Financials It is possible to increase the number of dimensions and this is known as a hypercube. The data cubes are created be extracting data from the operational databases -or from the data warehouse They are static - they are not subject to change and must be created before they can be used As an example a cube for sales could have (for instance) product, locations and time dimensions - and only data associated with these dimensions can be queried

31. Oracle Financials The data cube creations process is critical and requires in-depth, skilled frond end design work Data cubes are generally held in memory - in a ‘cube cache’ This diagram is a 3-dimensional cube : y z x

32. Oracle Financials The use of recurring aggregations indicated that the data processing language needed to have s new operator (or command) which could carry out all of the possible aggregations in a table which had been extracted for analysis. This table shows the rows relating to red Holdens or red Toyotas sold between 1998 and 2000 Make Year Colour Sales Holden 1999 Red 5000 Holden 2000 Red 6000 Toyota 1999 Red 8000

33. Oracle Financials The table also contains many other rows relating to sales of other cars and other colours This is a segment of SQL code (which you should be able to understand) and which includes the ‘with cube’ operator select make, year, Colour, sum(sales) from Sales where (make = ‘Holden’ or make = ‘Toyota’) and colour = ‘red’ and year between 1999 and 2000 group by Make, Year, Colour with cube;

34. Oracle Financials The 3 dimensions are Make, Year and Colour The query extracts all the constructed aggregates, and the aggregation is represented by the value ‘ALL’ which is present in all the domains and corresponds to all the possible values present in the domain.

35. Oracle Financials The data cube of the previous tale would look like this : Make Year Colour sum(Sales) Holden 1999 Red 5000 Holden 2000 Red 6000 Holden 1999 ALL 8000 Holden 2000 ALL 9000 Holden ALL Red 11000 Holden ALL ALL 17000 Toyota 1999 Red 8000 Toyota 1999 ALL 10000 Totota ALL Red 8000 Toyota ALL ALL 10000 ALL ALL ALL 27000

36. Oracle Financials The spatial diagram would look like this :- 2000 1999 Red ALL Holden Toyota ALL ALL

37. Oracle Financials So now that you have some idea of the terms • multidimensional • cube • aggregation • OLAP • ROLAP • Multidimensional DataBase Management System we will now move on to the Oracle Financials

38. Oracle Financials This diagram shows the Express Suite Product relationships Client Web Excel Client Web Client Web Excel Tools(VB) Financial Analyser Sales Analyser Custom Application Client Server Financial Sales Custom Analyser Analyser Application Oracle Express Server Oracle General RDBMS Legacy (Old) Ledger Flat Files

39. Oracle Financials The net results of all that is : The Express Server develops and organises data relevant to the ‘cube’ - multidimensioning (time, value, product) and the Oracle Financial applications are then utilised to further analyse the data collected by the Express Server The Express Server can be thought of as the ‘database’ engine

40. Oracle Financials • Let’s look at OFA - Oracle Financials Analyser It is an application which is directed at • financial reporting • analysis • planning It has been designed in a distributed architecture mode which permits users the autonomy to to create and manipulate their own scenarios of data - but not the ability to modify the base data

41. Oracle Financials The Architecture There are different workstation ‘types’ which allow for the tailoring of features and capabilities by individual users These ‘types’ also manage the flow and control of structures and data in the application

42. Oracle Financials There is ONE Super Administrator (software component) which has control of the application Sub-Administrators can be created These Administrators • create and distribute common structures (financial account values for example) • load and calculate data • create users • control access

43. Oracle Financials With each Administrator workstation there is a Shared Database and a Task Processor The shared database is the central data repository

44. Oracle Financials The Task Processor This controls the processing, submission and distribution of data and structures in the system The Task Processor can be run by its associated Administrator Workstations as a background task or it can be run from a dedicated workstation

45. Oracle Financials Express Server allows • single-write • multi-read access to an individual database The Task Processor sequentially controls the submission and processing of information to the shared database

46. Oracle Financials Each Administrator can have one or more subordinate workstations • Budget - Users have full access to their own section of data and can work in connected or disconnected mode • ‘What if’ analyses can be run on this section of data without affecting other users accessing the shared database • Analyst - Users access the shared database and can create their own documents - reports, graphs (or charts) and worksheets and save these in their own personal database

47. Oracle Financials • Analyst (cont’d) Authorisation can be granted to make ad hoc changes to data in the shared database (do you think this is • sound • secure • a good feature • dangerous • Another feature is that the Analyst workstation can create and view personal documents from Windows or a Web client

48. Oracle Financials External Web Users can access the shared database directly but don’t have a personal database They cannot create and save their own documents Such as user is a ‘casual’ - probably only needing to view and manipulate existing documents or enter and calculate data

49. Oracle Financials Excel This is an add-in (remember Solver ?) which can be used to query and report directly against the shared database. There is an Excel Data Collection toolkit which is useful for infrequent users. VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is included in this toolkit

50. Oracle Financials Sub-Administrator Users control a sub-set of the application. Sub-Administrators can have a sub-ordinate Budget, Web, Excel, and Administrator workstations That’s probably all very interesting but Oracle Financial Applications need to be built - much the same as you will, or have, ‘built’ the Excel assignment The next few overheads look at ‘the building regulations’.