SA Police plot new data warehouse

The organisation has settled on Oracle's 10g Enterprise Edition and Warehouse Builder 10g products, running on Sun Microsystems hardware. Business Objects' Enterprise 6.5 edition will provide Web-based reporting capability.

SAPOL appears to have already built the initial elements of the database with some external help, according to a tender document calling for a vendor to assist SAPOL on the project. However a spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.

The first elements to be tied into the new system will be the force's criminal intelligence and statistical data.

"The business requirements and high-level design for a program of work to support Criminal Intelligence was completed in December 2004," stated the document, noting part of that plan was ready to be built. Traffic data is also expected to be integrated in October of this year.

However more elements will soon follow.

"It is intended that other discrete business data such as human resources, finance, computer-aided dispatch and call centre will be integrated into the data warehouse following the successful deployment of the crime and traffic-related information," stated the documents.

"The full range of analysis, design, build and deployment services have yet to be undertaken for these other business areas."

SAPOL has picked Sun Microsystems as its hardware supplier for the new environment. The main production Oracle database will run on a quad-CPU SunFire V480R. The accompanying Business Objects software will run on a dual-CPU SunFire 280R system, while the development environment will run on a Sun 480R with two CPUs.

All three servers will run Solaris 9 as their operating system.

The core data warehouse system will be fed information by a number of other legacy Adabas and IDMS databases running on top of the z/OS 1.04 operating system on Amdahl mainframes. Those mainframes are maintained and administered by EDS.

Problems of identity
SAPOL also wants to solve some of its identity management issues.

"SAPOL currently has security systems in place for each piece of the network, server and application infrastructure," the documents stated. "Different logons are required for each server and application environment which have led to issues to user inconvenience and administrative overhead."

"SAPOL's technical vision is to provide an integrated identity management service that will provide password synchronisation and automated access right provision."

The organisation noted the solution would be implemented using an LDAP interface from a "central identity vault", or synchronisation between environments using Novell's eDirectory product -- which is compliant with the LDAP standard.

The Business Objects package will also eventually hook into the planned ID management initiative, noted the documents.