Skip to main content

Case Study:

Databases That Are Always Online and Lightning-Fast Business Applications and Analytics

Code on a computer screen

Industry: Medical Manufacturing

Project Type: Power BI and Analytics

Tools Used: SQL Server High Availability Groups, SQL Server Replication, SQL Server Reporting Services, Windows Clustering

The Benefits

Dollar Sign Stopwatch Icon Bar Graph Icon

$1,000’s
saved avoiding
database downtime

Minimal Wait Time
in applications and
analytics, resulting in more productive employees

Nearly Real Time Data
on reports
and dashboards

 

“Superior Consulting Services quickly understood our needs and was extremely attentive and responsive throughout the process. Open communication between our teams led to a successful outcome. The end solution SCS developed works very well and has been very helpful during system upgrades. Benefits include peace of mind and complete cloning of the data environment enabling reporting at all times.”

- Project Director

Project Overview

A medical device company that serves tens of thousands of patients had two very important requirements:

  • Their SQL Server database environment needed to be live 24/7.
  • Their reports and dashboards needed to be fast and not interfere with their business applications.

They partnered with SCS to implement high availability and replication in SQL Server to create an optimized reporting environment that never went down.

 

Goals

 

Maintain 100% availability of data.

 

 

Disaster recovery with no interruption.

 

 

Business applications run in a transactional environment.

 

 

Analytics run in a highly optimized reporting environment.

 

 

Reports contain live data when needed.

 

 

The Approach

  • SCS built a transactional data store (TDS) to hold all the databases that support the business applications.
  • SCS built an operational data store (ODS) that contains the same databases to be used for analytics.
  • SQL Server Replication was implemented to provide near real-time data in the ODS as changes are made in the TDS.
  • The ODS was extensively indexed so Power BI reports and dashboards run quickly.
  • Both the TDS and ODS environments were added to SQL Server Availability Groups so databases could be failed over if there was a server outage or maintenance being performed.

The Results

The TDS provides a fast database environment for business applications and the ODS provides the same for Power BI dashboards and reports.

Replication copies the data from the TDS to the ODS with an average of a few seconds of latency. 

The databases are always available regardless of server issues and maintenance.

Improve Your Performance and Profitability Today

SCS uses best-in-class tools to deliver database, reporting and data platform and analytics solutions. We partner with your team to develop custom solutions.