Moving Forward with the On Demand Real-time Enterprise

Chapter 1. Introduction 27

IBM has a strategy, and the solution components, to enable you to get there. Are

you ready?

1.3 Contents abstract

In this section, we give a brief description of the topics presented in this IBM

Redbook and how they are organized. The information presented includes, as

examples, an overview of real-time, data warehousing, information integration,

and business intelligence. The focus, however, is on the combination of those

subjects. More precisely, it is on techniques for developing a real-time enterprise

that can enable real-time business intelligence.

We know our readers will be from varied backgrounds, have varied levels of

interest, and typically limited reading time. The abstracts provide enough

information to enable selection of those topics that are of most importance to

you. We hope you will find them all of a sufficient level of interest that you will be

enticed to read the entire book.

We start with a brief overview of the IBM Redbook contents, by chapter:

򐂰 Chapter 1- This introduction: Here we provide a high-level overview of the

real-time enterprise. It describes and positions terms such as real-time and

on demand, and summarizes some of the requirements and changes realized

in developing a real-time enterprise.

򐂰 Chapter 2 - The real-time enterprise: In this chapter we take a closer look at

the meaning of the real-time enterprise, address some of the technical

challenges for implementing such an environment, and then consider the

solution capabilities that IBM has to offer:

򐂰 Chapter 3 - Architectures for the real-time enterprise: In this chapter we

describe some key considerations, and some of the key component

functionality required, as you begin developing an architecture to support your

real-time enterprise. We also discuss the demands for the various

infrastructure technologies to support the real-time enterprise that are

available today. And lastly we look at some future trends and directions of the

initiative, and of the next generation of infrastructure components.

򐂰 Chapter 4 - Industry specific real-time enterprise examples: Here we discuss

businesses in a number of industry segments, their requirements for real-time

business intelligence, and their evolution towards becoming a real-time

enterprise.

򐂰 Chapter 5 - IBM technologies supporting the real-time enterprise: In this

chapter we introduce you to several IBM technologies and products that can

be used when developing your real-time enterprise. A number of these

28 Moving Forward with the On Demand Real-time Enterprise

products were used in this redbook project testing environment. We discuss

how they interact, and their role in a real-time enterprise environment.

򐂰 Chapter 6 - Real-time data warehouse update approaches: Are you ready for

real-time? This chapter describes a number of approaches that can be used,

depending on your particular requirements and your current environment. It

describes a number of techniques and technologies available to help as you

move forward with your real-time enterprise.

򐂰 Chapter 7 - The project test environment: What did we have as a test

environment while developing this redbook? In this chapter, we describe the

software and hardware used, and give you a macro view of how those

products relate. We investigated two approaches, based on two separate

versions of WebSphere Business Integration. New and powerful capabilities

made the task much easier.

򐂰 Chapter 8 - A retail industry case study: To validate the techniques and

technologies discussed in this redbook, we decided to demonstrate a case

study. It revolves around a retailer and the processes used to discover,

analyze, and resolve a business problem. It this case, the handling of a

defective product, provided by a particular supplier.

That is a very brief abstract of the redbook contents. We think it will help in your

selection and prioritization for reading topics. But of course, we believe you

should read the entire book and that you will find it both interesting and

informative.