Staging Area

[singh42]

Hello,

I was wondering what is the purpose of the staging area?  Say I go to publish my data from Metric Studio, I must next run the task to import the data to the staging area. 

Why can't the publish process from Metric Designer include the import of data into the staging area at the same time? 

Why is there a two step process which involves me importing the data, and then lastly transferring it into the content store?

[Erik]

There are a number of reasons for having to load data via the staging tables.

If a weekly load task is made up of 20 Metric Designer extracts, it is a lot more efficient to run each one to load into the staging tables and then run one task to take the data from the staging tables into the metric store. In Cognos Connection, you can design a Job entry to run the Metric Designer extracts followed by the load from staging tables to the metric store all to run in series.

Also, it can be very useful when troubleshooting dataload issues by being able to split the load into stages to determine at exactly which point the dataload is failing. If a dataload fails at the transfer into staging tables step, it would be a waste of time and resources to then run the load from staging into metric store as the data would either not exist in the staging tables or would not contain the expected values.