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Overview | Benefits | Creation | Portability | Scalability
Omnidex Snapshots provide an easy, portable, high-performing copy of a database or a data warehouse. The data from an underlying data source is stored in raw data files, and is usually heavily indexed. This snapshot database can then be moved to other servers for analysis, or even replicated and deployed in production.
Omnidex Snapshots are an important tool for databases that are heavily updated. These databases are usually lightly indexed to preserve performance, and this leaves the database ill-prepared for analytical queries. In fact, many production databases disallow these analytical queries to avoid impacting performance. Omnidex Snapshots solve this problem by creating a segregated, portable, heavily-indexed copy of the database that can be easily offloaded to another server.
Once an Omnidex Snapshot is created, it no longer requires access to the relational database. Whether residing on the same server or a different server, Omnidex will simply use a combination of the raw data files and the Omnidex indexes to satisfy all queries. This reduces the load on the relational database, and it also allows distribution of the data without requiring additional relational database licenses for other servers. If needed, Omnidex Snapshots are also easily replicated for expanded scalability.
Omnidex Snapshots provide an excellent opportunity to enhance the database layout without altering the underlying database. When creating the Omnidex Snapshot, tables can be denormalized, data can be aggregated, and new columns can be created based on any SQL expression. This provides the flexibility to achieve higher performance and develop custom applications without requiring the review and planning that is needed when changing the underlying, production database.
Omnidex Snapshots can be created for a subset of data, such as a particular year or a particular division of a company. This allows analysis on a smaller subset of the data without having to impact the underlying database.
Omnidex Snapshots can be easily moved to other servers by simply copying a directory of files.