Sybase Analytics

In my previous entry, I listed out the major new features in Sybase IQ 15.2. This time, we’ll examine some scenarios to get a better understanding of how these new features address business problems for Sybase IQ users.

Text Search and Analysis

An insurance company implements a Sybase IQ-based  system to retain emails and other electronic documents in anticipation of future litigation and investigations. When a legal hold is placed on the company’s electronic information, or when an internal investigation is necessary, all the archived information can be searched and delivered within that system. The ability to quickly access vast amounts of electronic information that was previously inaccessible due to its unstructured format accelerates the legal process, aids investigative analysis, and improves the odds of mounting a successful case.

Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Text Search and Analysis, this company can search for and retrieve relevant documents from a large set of continuously archived historical information. With  the ability to perform complex searches involving scoring, proximity and multiple terms, finding relevant information is now far easier than manual processes, plus simpler and more efficient than implementing a separate system just for text search.

Query Federation

A distributor maintains a Sybase IQ decision support system to aid in allocating stock to retailers and issuing procurement orders to manufacturers. Information regarding inventory levels at retailers would be helpful to the distributor, but some retailers’ inventory information is proprietary and they will not allow the distributor to maintain a copy. The distributor, however, is allowed to access the current inventory information for the SKUs it supplies. Query Federation is used to access the retailers’ database, leading to a more efficient procurement process.

Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Query Federation, this distributor can access information in its original location, without moving it or copying it into the data warehouse.

Web-Enabled Analytics

Business analysts and statisticians at a marketing services firm are developing a customer segmentation model for a client who wants to target the most profitable segments. The analysts require fast time-to-result and access to data in Sybase IQ while validating their model. Python is their language of choice for fast prototyping. The analysts are able to quickly iterate in order to develop a satisfactory model that is tested against large data sets in Sybase IQ.

The model can now be ported to C/C++ for analyzing live customers in production use. Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Web-Enabled Analytics, this marketing services firm reduced the time needed to meet its clients’ requests. Support for Python means that business-focused analysts can quickly develop and test their prototype models, and that the entire environment can be moved to the web should such a delivery model be required.

Real-Time Loading

An online shopping site employs a complex predictive model based on the customer’s profile combined with deep demographic data to drive upsell offers both at the time of purchase and during follow-up communications. The upsell offers come at various stages in the order  and fulfillment process. They are based on the customer’s profile and similar purchases made by other shoppers — with significant weighting on current and most recent purchases. Acceptance of an upsell offer is treated as an exception within the overall order fulfillment process.  Whenever possible, new purchases are added to the current customer shipment before it is sent out. Shipping staff rely on real-time reporting of these exceptions in order to support just-in-time shipping updates. In order to ensure the highest levels of upsell, improve shipping efficiencies, and maintain customer satisfaction,  the shopping site requires both carefully culled and  transformed data to power their predictive model as well as instant access to data for the shipping exception reports.

 Sybase IQ 15.2 offers multiple, flexible ways of bringing disparate data into the analytics environment in real time. Sybase Replication Server 15.5 supports immediate data access from Sybase ASE, while Sybase ETL 4.9 can support both batch and continuous data load from data sources such as Oracle and DB2. With this capability, the online shopping site can ensure the best upsell results without slowing their shipping schedule.