MAXIMUS - SQL Server 2005 Case Study



|Overview | | |“The speed with which we can create cubes using Analysis Services and the Analysis Management Object |

|Country or Region: United States | | |is impressive. … It was obvious we needed to take this out to our customers.” |

|Industry: Government - Professional Services | | |Paul Nick, Director of TIENET Software Development, MAXIMUS |

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|Customer Profile | | | |

|Based in Reston, Virginia, MAXIMUS offers | | | |

|government and industry a range of unique | | | |

|services, products, and solutions, including | | | |

|TIENET, its Web-based special education case | | | |

|management and instructional management | | | |

|system. | | | |

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|Business Situation | | | |

|MAXIMUS wanted to extend TIENET by creating a| | | |

|data mart to give its users a central | | | |

|repository for running analytics and | | | |

|reporting to gain a better view into the | | | |

|effectiveness of educational programs. | | | |

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|Solution | | | |

|The company created a data mart using | | | |

|Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 as a central | | | |

|repository. Multidimensional cubes to support| | | |

|faster analytics were created using Microsoft| | | |

|SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. | | | |

| | | | |

|Benefits | | | |

|Central repository for disparate sources | | | |

|Integrated solution | | | |

|Powerful analytics and reporting | | | |

|Ease of use | | | |

|Rapid application development | | | |

| | | |MAXIMUS, with more than 5,500 employees working in the United States, Canada, and Australia, provides|

| | | |services to public sector organizations, including more than 2,000 schools. The company’s Web-based |

| | | |TIENET application suite is a well established special education and instructional management system.|

| | | |To provide school districts with better insights into the success of their educational efforts, |

| | | |MAXIMUS created a data mart solution using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database software to provide a|

| | | |central repository for information from TIENET and other applications. MAXIMUS uses SQL Server 2005 |

| | | |Analysis Services to create multidimensional data cubes to support faster analytics and reporting. |

| | | |Reports that used to require weeks of turn around time from other vendors are now created within |

| | | |minutes by users. |

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| | | |[pic] |

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Situation

For more than 30 years, MAXIMUS has been committed to its mission of “Helping Government Serve the People.” The company’s 5,500 employees located in more than 280 offices in the United States, Canada, and Australia, provide services to a spectrum of government organizations including some 2,000 school districts, 300 courts, 100 colleges and universities, and 80 airports.

The MAXIMUS Web-based TIENET application suite is valued by school districts because it provides a direct connection between curriculum and assessment for individual and groups of students in both regular and special education. TIENET helps educators organize the instructional process and monitor results to help achieve mandated educational standards, and to meet reporting demands. TIENET includes a variety of academically based modules that include assessment, instructional resource libraries, state learning standards, response to intervention management and analysis, pre-referral for special education and special education case management.

TIENET uses a relational database for online transaction processing (OLTP) to store a range of information generated in the education process and data used by educators creating lesson plans, designing and administrating tests, allocating resources, and recording other events associated with delivering education on the classroom, school, and district level.

MAXIMUS developers stay closely attuned to customer needs. One trend they noted was an increasing desire for analytics as schools and school districts needed to bring together data from disparate sources to gauge their own progress and to comply with a range of state and federal mandates such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and No Child Left Behind.

“Our school district customers are constantly being asked to generate reports requiring integration of data beyond what is in their student information system,” says Paul Nick, Director of TIENET Software Development at MAXIMUS. “They might have to pull information from a collection of older AS/400 applications, plus a patchwork of newer applications that have been added over the years to meet defined purposes without any effort to integrate with other systems. It can be a nightmare for our IT customers to field these requests, so we wanted to pull all of the information they might need into a central data mart for analytics and reporting.”

To offer educators an optimal business intelligence (BI) solution, MAXIMUS needed to develop a data mart strategy that would be easy to deploy, easy to use, and comprehensive in delivering analytical results.

Solution

Building upon Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database software, and other elements of the Microsoft Application Platform, MAXIMUS has created a BI data mart integration solution for its TIENET users. Data mart information is aggregated into multidimensional cubes for faster online transaction processing (OLAP) queries, using SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, the OLAP component in SQL Server. The solution runs on the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system.

The company chose to create an OLAP data mart, rather than expand upon reporting already offered in the TIENET OLTP solution, for a number of reasons, including the need to not slow the OLTP production database by running OLAP queries against it. Educators also needed a solution that included data from other sources to provide a richer data set to run analytics against.

Uniting data from different sources into multi-dimensional cubes makes it easier for school officials to analyze results, run ‘what if’ scenarios, and in other ways combine and explore information to identify the best ways to deliver educational programs to diverse student populations.

The TIENET data mart architecture includes:

■ ETL Tier. The solution includes using SQL Server 2005 Integration Services to perform extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes to clean data from disparate sources before importing it into the relational data warehouse.

■ Data Warehouse Tier. Data from disparate sources is centralized in a relational database hosted on Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Larger school districts may have data stores exceeding 1 terabyte. A read-only copy of the TIENET system is the core of the data warehouse, but the information is augmented with data from other sources including school district human resources, financial, food services applications as well as Library data, medical information, discipline, and transportation applications.

■ OLAP Data Mart Tier. Information from the data warehouse is converted into an OLAP database with multidimensional cubes optimized for rapidly answering queries. The multidimensional cubes are created and managed with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.

■ Reporting Tier. Data mart reports are created and distributed using SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, a comprehensive, server-based solution for creating, managing, and delivering real-time information to support daily operations and decisions. This technology enables users to define report layouts, embed the results of relational and/or analytical queries, and deliver the report in various formats including PDF and HTML.

■ Presentation Tier. The BI solution provides browser-based access for all stakeholders—from administrators and teachers, to parents and students—to a central portal created using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. Microsoft Active Directory® service is used to enforce role-based access for data security.

Benefits

MAXIMUS was able to easily create a central repository for data from disparate sources, using the Microsoft Application Platform, including SQL Server 2005. Other benefits from using the Microsoft Application Platform to create its data mart include an integrated solution, powerful analytics and reporting, ease of use, and rapid application development.

Central Repository for Disparate Sources

Uniting information from disparate data sources across a school district makes it easier for educators to accomplish their teaching objectives, run analytics to search for ways to improve academic programs, to generate reports for local use and to meet state and federal reporting requirements.

“We have customers who are very good at IT, but who are having to work far too hard to meet the wide variety of reporting requests they must field,” says Nick. “They are constrained by data silos—information locked up in legacy systems or in custom applications that were never designed to be shared with other applications. We’re using SQL Server 2005 to break down the silos to create a central data repository for reporting and analytics.”

Nora Paape, Vice President of the Educational Services Division of MAXIMUS, points to the example of special education programs, in which educators create an individual education program (IEP) for each student.

“They can create the IEP using the TIENET special education case management system,” Paape says. “But these students often have transportation needs and usually the districts handle transportation using a completely different application. The educator needs to pinpoint where the empty seat is from hundreds of different routes, and may also need a bus that can handle a wheelchair or has other required equipment. Life is easier for everyone if the information from these different systems can be united in a single repository, and that’s what we’ve done with SQL Server.”

Another example is with the Home and Hospital programs of school districts that provide visiting educators for children dealing with healthcare issues that keep them from school. “Administrators need access to HR records to determine certifications and qualifications; they need access to scheduling data to ensure the visiting educator is available; they need to be able to access the student information system for academic records and class schedules; and they also need to process payments. Often times this means working with three or more unconnected applications,” says Paape. “Bringing this information together into a central data mart makes it easier to create such programs. It also makes it easier to run analytics and reports to measure program effectiveness.”

Integrated Solution

A key influence on the MAXIMUS decision to offer a data mart as an extension of its TIENET special education case management and instructional management system was the ease of use and power of SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. Nick attended a Microsoft BI Voyage program in Denver where he learned more about Analysis Services, and its easy integration with Microsoft Visual Studio® development system and the .NET Framework.

He was especially impressed by the new Analysis Management Objects (AMO) library that simplifies creating or modifying Analysis Services objects, such as databases, cubes, dimensions, and data mining structures from a client application in managed code under the .NET Framework 2.0.

“At the BI Voyage Conference it became very clear that we could use the .NET Framework and Analysis Management Object to very quickly build a nice integration between TIENET and a data mart,” says Nick. “We saw, and have since demonstrated, that users can log into TIENET, and build a cube very quickly directly from TIENET using a wizard-like interface. Our users can design key performance indicators (KPIs) and publish the KPIs to the school principal role or the superintendent role, for example, so the information is displayed on their personalized home page. Educators can visualize data cubes at detailed levels without using a visualizer. We are giving our users great analytical powers without asking them to leave the comfort of our existing application.”

The company was impressed with how quickly analytic solutions could be configured.

“The speed with which we can create cubes using Analysis Services and the Analysis Management Object is impressive,” says Nick. “The impressive speed helped us get the go-ahead for our project. Prior to working with Analysis Services and AMO there had been a lot of talk about the power of analytics, but with our new solution we were able to demonstrate to our own internal management how easily and quickly it worked. It was obvious we needed to take this out to our customers.”

MAXIMUS feels it is able to benefit from Microsoft technology investments to provide better solutions for its customers.

“It’s obvious that Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into the development of the .NET Framework, SQL Server, Integration Services, SharePoint Server, and the rest of the Microsoft Application Platform,” says Nick. “We gain a huge advantage because we as a development team can build upon the Microsoft investment and its dedication to product integration, and make the benefits accessible to our customers in a way that delivers big value to them. We can convert Microsoft’s huge investments into value for our customers.”

Powerful Analytics and Reporting

Paape notes that educators are eager to apply BI concepts toward analyzing curriculum and results to identify best practices for dealing with specific types of educational challenges.

“There is huge interest in being able to link specific instructional strategies with outcomes,” Paape says. “Educators want to see data that will help them determine which instructional methods are more beneficial to individual students, and to see which strategies have yielded the best academic results.”

Disparate information systems have been the biggest roadblock to gaining the kind of overall view that educators want.

“Some systems examine pieces of the puzzle,” says Paape. “But you really need something like a data mart to gain the kind of powerful analytics that let you say, ‘Here’s the trend. This is what the data shows.’ You need to be able to include any data sets that could have impact on the educational outcomes. We’ve been able to create a solution that meets all of these needs using SQL Server 2005.”

Ease of Use

MAXIMUS views ease of use as an absolute essential to gaining acceptance from busy educators who don’t have time to learn dedicated analytic or reporting solutions. The consistent user interface across Microsoft products and the intuitive design of Analysis Services and Reporting Services make it easy to get users excited about the data mart solution.

“We know Analysis Services and Reporting Services are easy to use because when we sit down next to an educator and start showing them the solution, they’ll take the mouse right out of your hand to explore on their own,” says Paape. “We just show them how it works and then they immediately understand how to use the system and appreciate the power of what they are now able to do by having information from so many different applications centralized into a data mart.”

School district IT departments, many of which have in the past dealt with complex reporting solutions that required third-party support, appreciate the ease of working with Reporting Services.

“We know of districts using other reporting solutions that pay vendors $1,000 for a new report and have to wait two to three weeks or more for delivery,” says Paape. “With Reporting Services, we can have an educator creating his or her own reports within two or three minutes. This saves money, but even more importantly it saves time and provides an immediacy that encourages research and exploration.”

Rapid Application Development

MAXIMUS enjoys rapid application development using the Microsoft Application Platform. Because ETL plays such a significant role in uniting data from disparate information systems into a centralized data mart, the company is appreciative of the enterprise-class ETL tools provided with SQL Server 2005 Integration Services.

“One school district could easily include 10 different student systems that we need to tie into, plus a whole range of other data-rich applications,” says Nick. “Chances are good that many of these will be old proprietary systems that may or may not have export capabilities. We need powerful ETL tools, and that’s what we’ve found with Integration Services. Integration Services has been key to achieving our vision of pulling information from disparate systems into a single data mart.”

In addition to being powerful, the ETL tools of Integration Services are also easy to use, which is another plus. “We don’t want our rocket scientists to be busy doing ETL,” says Nick. “ETL is critical to what we do, but we can’t let it dominate our development. With Integration Services we can take someone with reasonable technical skills and quickly bring them up to speed doing ETL.”

MAXIMUS used Visual Studio Team System, a set of tools that helped the company’s software team collaborate and communicate more efficiently, and Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server, a core component of Visual Studio Team System. Team Foundation Server is a collaboration server that offers a number of functions including source code control, work-item and issue tracking, integrated process guidance, project health, and status reporting.

“Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server were essential to our development efforts because our product team includes key members located in different states,” says Nick. “Once we had Team Foundation Server in place we wondered how we had managed without it because it provides such a great solution for checking in code from any location in the world. It also provides a complete history of all changes, the ability to associate code changes with tests, and so many other features that help us track what is happening with a project.”

The company found Team Foundation Server helpful when a government agency it was providing services to required a Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) audit to help ensure security of the software solution MAXIMUS was providing.

“The SAS 70 audit could have been a nightmare, but we sailed right through it because Team Foundation Server made it so easy to document all of our security procedures,” says Nick. “We were able to provide the complete history of our testing, demonstrate the testing that was performed for all code changes, and document all other areas of the audit. Team Foundation Server saved us an enormous amount of time in complying with the needs of the audit.”

In summary, MAXIMUS found that using the Microsoft Application Platform, including SQL Server 2005 gave it the ability to create a high-value data mart analytics and reporting solution that could be easily integrated with its existing solution.

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:

servers/default.mspx

Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is comprehensive, integrated data management and analysis software that enables organizations to reliably manage mission-critical information and confidently run today’s increasingly complex business applications. By providing high availability, security enhancements, and embedded reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps companies gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage. And, because it’s part of Windows Server System, SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments.

For more information about SQL Server 2005, go to:

sqlserver

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“We need powerful ETL tools … Integration Services has been key to achieving our vision of pulling information from disparate systems into a single data mart.”

Paul Nick, Director of TIENET Software Development, MAXIMUS

| |

“At the BI Voyage Conference it became very clear that we could use the .NET Framework and Analysis Management Object to very quickly build a nice integration between TIENET and a data mart.”

Paul Nick, Director of TIENET Software Development, MAXIMUS

| |

“We know Analysis Services and Reporting Services are easy to use because when we sit down next to an educator and start showing them the solution, they’ll take the mouse right out of your hand to explore on their own.”

Nora Paape, Vice President of the Educational Services Division, MAXIMUS

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Servers

− Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition

■ Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

■ Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

− Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server |Technologies

− Active Directory

− Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services

Hardware

■ AMD-based and Intel-based server computers | |

“It’s obvious that Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into the development of the .NET Framework, SQL Server, Integration Services, SharePoint Server, and the rest of the Microsoft Application Platform. ... We can convert Microsoft’s huge

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TIENET Architecture – Creates a central repository for data from disparate sources.

“Life is easier for everyone if the information from these different systems can be united in a single repository, and that’s what we’ve done with SQL Server.”

Nora Paape, Vice President of the Educational Services Division, MAXIMUS

| |

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2007 | | |

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

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Fast Facts | |Heading |Heading | |Typical large school district database |1+ terabyte | |Typical data sources requiring ETL |10+ | |Delivery time for new reports when sent out to a reporting vendor |2 to 3 weeks | |Delivery time for new reports when created by Reporting Services user |2 to 3 minutes | |Application Platform Optimization Capabilities |Development, Data Management, Business Intelligence | |

Key Performance Indicators - provide data at a glance.

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