Case Study

820 Davis Street, Suite 220

Evanston, IL 60201

USA

Telephone: 847-424-2497

www.ssisoftwareservices.com
The Client
Strategic Systems Internatonal (SSI) was retained
by a leading global fnancial informaton provider
to solve comprehensive data integraton and data
verifcaton processes that ensured accurate and
tmely processing and integraton of large volumes of
data originatng from global fnancial exchanges and
companies. SSI implemented data integraton services
for the clients four separate fnancial database and
analytcs products. The client selected SSI for its deep
knowledge and established expertse in designing
cost-efectve and efcient solutons for managing
data from multple, disparate sources.
The Goals and Challenges
The client possessed an extensive data warehouse
of global fnancial data, which received content from
numerous vendors in a variety of formats (.xml,
.txt, .csv, .xls, relatonal databases, etc.). The typical
data ingeston process included downloading data
that passed through the extracton, transformaton
and loading (ETL) process, prior to warehousing and
delivery of content to the clients customers.
The project challenges were four-fold:
1. Volume and frequency The client obtained
voluminous data at rapid rates. Up to 48 data
feeds per day were recorded for certain data sets;
each feed contained hundreds of megabytes of
data and hundreds of thousands of records.
2. Rapid processing Each feed received by the
client underwent the ETL process, where the data
was extracted from source fles, transformed and
cleansed by applying business rules, then loaded
into data warehouses. The benchmark goal was
to have each feed processed in under 10 minutes.
3. Stringent standards Throughout the ETL
process, the quality of data had to be ensured.
The process included validaton of adherence to
business rules and conversion calculatons.
Data Integraton for Global Financial Informaton Provider
Client: Leading fnancial informaton
provider
Goal: Improve database
performance
improve cost savings
Soluton: comprehensive data
integraton and transformaton

Case Study
820 Davis Street, Suite 220

Evanston, IL 60201

USA

Telephone: 847-424-2497

www.ssisoftwareservices.com
The Goals and Challenges, contnued
4. Aggressive tmeline In additon to the
fundamental data challenges, the client set
demanding project tmelines to ensure that the
data was integrated within the applicaton and
available to the end users immediately afer it
was made available by the primary date source.
The Soluton and Technology
The soluton to the challenge did not simply reside in
using state-of-the-art technology, but encompassed
a complete life-cycle project management discipline
that began with comprehensive discussions on the
project scope and purpose. The SSI project team
established complete project tmelines working with
the client-side Business Analyst. At the outset of
the project, SSI clarifed and confrmed the clients
business rules applied during the ETL process. Follow
the requirements phase of the project, a thorough
data analysis was conducted by SSI to devise an
appropriate data model and database design.
Implementaton utlized SSIS (SQL Server Integraton
Services) for the ETL process. SSI developed stored
procedures for implementng the business logic. The
quality assurance process involved the verifcaton of
business logic, as well as validaton of data ingeston
results. During every phase of the development
process, the code was optmized to ensure the
clients stringent tmelines for data ingeston.
The technology employed for this project included:
MS .Net and C++ for efcient parsing of input fls
MS SQL Server (2005/2008) and SSIS for data
ingeston
Database: MS SQL and Oracle on Windows and
UNIX platorms
The Results
The four separate projects were delivered within
the clients aggressive tmetable and on-budget. The
following results were achieved:
Performance enhancements Average fle size for
the clients data set was around 500GB. SSI ensured
data accuracy during the ingeston process and
incorporated additonal logic to correct issues, such
as miscalculated consttuents and redundant data
storage. Targeted data tables were restructured to
increase performance that resulted in major cost
savings and enhanced revenue potental.
Improved revenue forecast The client antcipated
an additonal $6 - $14 million in revenue, due
in measurable part to SSIs data integraton and
transformaton profciency.
Efectve scale-up SSI contnued to grow the size
of the data warehouse by incorporatng additonal
global fnancial content without comprimising speed
or efciency of the system.
To date, Strategic Systems has successfully
implemented nearly 50 data integraton projects for
its global fnancial informaton provider; completng,
on average, about 8 to 10 projects per year.

Improved revenue forecast:
$6-14 million