BW & BPS Design Review

A Bluefin Design Review looks at either the intended or actual design of a solution, to determine whether it is fit for purpose.

For example, in the BW area, performance is often an afterthought. Something that works well in a development system is brought to its knees by production data volumes.

The design also needs to take factors such as support and maintenance into consideration. An over-complex solution may be too hard for you to support internally.

Bluefin are experts at designing robust, scaleable and performant BW solutions.

During the review, potential problem areas are examined including:

• Performance
  
• Security
  
• Robustness
  
• Supportability
  
• Best practice alignment
  
• ABAP enhancements and transformation

The deliverable is a Design Review document detailing a list of suggested improvements.

The process typically takes less than a week for most applications.

BW Best Practice Review

A Bluefin Best Practice review is typically carried out in the early stages of a new project. It looks at all aspects of the project and system to make sure that Best Practice is being used throughout.

At the project level, this will involve looking at the project approach, controls and procedures to ensure that opportunities are not being missed.

At the system level, BW is built upon a layered architecture which makes it very difficult to subsequently make significant changes to the design or architecture. The Best Practice will review will look at a number of aspects such as:

• System landscape
  
• Alignment with Enterprise Data Warehousing theory and best practice
  
• Mechanisms for getting data into and out of BW
  
• Front end reporting options
  
• Use of BW functionality to make sure you are getting the most out of the product. After all, you can?t use features that you don?t know about.
  

A Bluefin Best Practice Review is usually complete in three days.

BW Performance Review

Bluefin?s renowned BW Performance Review has been successfully carried out many times for organisations such as BAE Systems, Westland, GSK and Capita.

Its goal is simple. To ensure that your system is ready to face the demands that are and will be placed on it.

This covers aspects such as:

• Hardware sizing and configuration
  
• Backup and recovery
  
• Performance tuning - both application and database specific
  
• Query performance including a statistical review based on a histogram analysis of technical content
  

The review can be carried out at any time but will get most benefit at the following milestones:

• Post-installation to ensure that the system is ready for development to start
  
• Prior to UAT to ensure that performance and stability will meet users expectations
  
• Several months post go-live when live usage patterns and areas of concern should have emerged.
  

Bluefin?s Holistic Performance Review is carried out by only Bluefin?s most experienced consultants, and usually takes three days.