Section 7.2. Data Transformation Service

7.2. Data Transformation Service

DTS is a SQL Server 2000 tool that takes data from a source database, manipulates it, and inserts it into a destination database. When MOM Reporting is installed, a scheduled task is created on the reporting server that calls a DTS package-creating executable. The executable, located in <installdrive>\Program Files\Microsoft System Center Reporting\Reporting, is named MOM.Datawarehousing.DTSPackageGenerator.exe. This DTS package then takes operational data, transforms it into the correct format for the System Center Reporting database, and inserts the data into that database.

All the configuration options are set in this command-line call of the scheduled task:

Figure 7-21. Successful restore of the master database

     MOM.Datawarehousing.DTSPackageGenerator.exe /silent /srcserver:homesqlserver /srcdb:     OnePoint /dwserver:HOMESQLSERVER /dwdb:SystemCenterReporting /product:"Microsoft     Operations Manager" 

There is nothing else that you should need to do. However, since DTS touches the OnePoint database on a daily and on-demand basis, you should be familiar with it. There may come a time when you want to trigger a data transfer, such as before performing maintenance on the OnePoint database server that requires an outage. You want to make sure that the most current data has been copied to the data warehouse before proceeding.

By default, the scheduled task (see Figure 7-22) runs once a day at 1:00 a.m. and transfers data that is more than five minutes old and has been newly written to the OnePoint database since the last transfer. Chapter 8 covers the installation of MOM Reporting Services, but as you can see in Figure 7-22, this tasks needs a security context to run in, which is supplied during install. Since this account must have access to OnePoint and System Center Reporting databases, it makes sense to use the DAS Account, but you don't have to; any account with the appropriate permissions will do.

Deselecting the Enabled checkbox lets you disable this task when restoring the OnePoint database.

Figure 7-22. DTS OnePoint to System Center Reporting data transform task