The XML ODBC driver retrieves operational data from Rational Insight Data Service, generic REST Data Services or XML files, appropriately models the relationships between entities, and exposes them in a business-friendly manner to report authors.
For operational metadata models, since data comes from the operational system directly, and the calculations and transformation defined in the metadata model or in reports need to be done on the fly for every query request, it is not recommended to build a dimensional model or do other complex calculations in the operational metadata model or in reports based on the operational metadata models.
These metadata models use operational data from the following sources:
An operational metadata model has 3 layers:
Physical metadata
This layer contains metadata information that comes directly from the data source. This is similar to the data warehouse metadata model.
Consolidate view
This layer takes query items from the physical metadata layer, and build necessary relationships.
Business view
This layer uses shortcuts to reference objects in the Consolidate view. The shortcuts are grouped in a business-friendly manner. This is the only layer that is exposed to report authors.
Rational Insight supports the reuse of these models for multiple data sources.