Specifications

122 CHAPTER 6 Scalable Data Warehousing
Data Warehouse’s Landing Zone. You then invoke a command-line tool, DWLoader, and spec-
ify options to load the data into the appliance. Or you can use Integration Services to move
data to the Landing Zone and call the loading functionality directly. To load small amounts of
data, you can connect to the control node and use the SQL INSERT statement.
Queries can run concurrently with load processing, so your data warehouse is always avail-
able during ETL processing. DWLoader loads table rows in bulk into an existing table in the
appliance. You have several options for loading rows into a table. You can add all rows to the
end of the table by using append mode. Another option is to append new rows and update
existing rows by using upsert mode. A third option is to delete all existing rows rst and then
to insert all rows into an empty table by using reload mode.
Monitoring and Management
Parallel Data Warehouse includes the Admin Console, a Web-based application with which
you can monitor the health of the appliance, query execution status, and view other informa-
tion useful for tuning user queries. This application runs on IIS on the control node and is
accessible by using Internet Explorer.
The Admin Console allows you to view these options:
■
Appliance Dashboard Displays status details, such as utilization metrics for CPUs,
disks, and the network, and displays activity on the nodes
■
Queries Activity Displays a list of running queries and queries recently completed,
with related errors, if any, and provides the ability to drill down to details to view the
query execution plan and node execution information
■
Load Activity Displays load plans, the current state of loads, and related errors, if any
■
Backup and Restore Displays a log of backup operations
■
Active Locks Displays a list of locks across all nodes and their current status
■
Active Sessions Displays active user sessions to aid monitoring of resource contention
■
Application Errors Displays error event information
■
Node Health Displays hardware and software alerts and allows an administrator to
view the health of specic nodes
To manage database objects, you might need to query the tables or view the objects. The
version of SQL Server Management Studio included with SQL Server 2008 R2 is not currently
compatible with Parallel Data Warehouse, but you can still use other tools. For example, you
can use a command-line utility, Dwsql, to query a table. Using Dwsql is similar to using Sql-
cmd. An alternative with a graphical user interface is the Nexus query tool from Cofng Data
Warehousing (Cofng DW), which is distributed with each appliance installation. This tool op-
erates much like SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) by allowing you to navigate through
an object explorer to nd tables and views and to run queries interactively.