Everyone always asks us how we do what we do, and why, in over 20 years of Oracle E-Business Suite implementations, no one else has ever created software to automate the process of changing the underlying configurations or consolidating or separating data. eprentise software is built on a proprietary process called Metadata Analysis that is really the engine that drives the changes in an Oracle E-Business Suite. eprentise Metadata Analysis uses patterns and rules-based technology to discover everything about a particular database.
A good analogy for Metadata Analysis is an architecture diagram for an already-built house (see That Old House). The architecture diagram includes all the wires and the pipes in addition to all the other internals of the house, like where every stud is located, whether the wallboard is aligned, the mechanicals including the type and efficiency of the heating unit, and the age of each appliance and how it is used.
This architecture diagram knows the capacity of each wire or object in the house, knows what it is connected to, knows the order of operations if something needs to be changed, and fully understands the impact of that change. Metadata Analysis discovers and documents all database objects (e.g., tables and columns, primary and unique keys, rows and objects, foreign keys, other constraints, triggers) and application objects. It understands the data and has a built-in knowledge repository of how every piece of data is used, and how that data supports each business process. When it finds information (in the format of rules) about an instance, it confirms the information by checking every row of data to see if the information is consistent within the database, then validates the information against the eprentise Knowledge Repository. In addition, the eprentise Knowledge Repository houses information from each version of Oracle E-Business Suite gleaned from a variety of methods. (Only about 30% of what we find is documented in the DBA or FND tables or in the Oracle Technical Reference Manuals).
After all the rules about the metadata are confirmed and validated, Metadata Analysis populates the eprentise Knowledge Repository with information specifically about the database, its schemas, constraints, and other database objects. It also compares configuration details between a source and a target. The source and targets can be different database instances, or different operating units, or really anything in the EBS. eprentise software uses the rules that it finds during the Metadata Analysis process to dynamically generate code to perform four functions: copy, filter, change, and merge.
Again, back to the house analogy. Once you have all the building materials available, and if you can get a good schematic of the house, you can remodel it with the right tools. You can move walls, add on to the existing structure, or even start over again on the same foundation. Within Oracle E-Business Suite, Metadata Analysis gives us the schematic, your data and business processes are the building materials, and we have the software tools to remodel EBS any way that you want, whether it is merging data together, splitting it apart, changing it, or moving data to realign it with the changes in your business.
