U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, Purchasing Division, Room 1230, 844 North Rush St., Chicago, IL 60611-2092

D -- DEVELOPMENT OF DATA WAREHOUSE/DATA MART FUNCTIONALITY SOL 99RFI21 POC Velinda Nix, 312-751-3387 FAX 312-751-4923 The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) seeks sources to allow the agency to develop data warehouse/data mart functionality. The general hardware/software configuration is an IBM 2003-2C5 processor with the OS/390 operating system. Upon written request, the RRB will provide a document detailing the current software and hardware in use at the RRB. Requests may be submitted to the address identified above or faxed to 312/751-4923. No telephone calls will be accepted. The software packages(s) offered must have the characteristics and capabilities described below. Companies having the ability to furnish this software are requested to provide written notification (including telephone number for a point of contact) and detailed data regarding this software to the processing office in this notice within 15 calendar days from the date of this synopsis. Information on how suggested products perform the following functions and exhibit the following characteristics is required: 1. The data warehouse/data mart suggested must be compatible with or accessible by the RRB's existing hardware and software. It can reside on the mainframe or on an independent server. 2. The data warehouse/data mart should enable intricate queries and timely processing of volumes of data, being flexible and scalable. The data warehouse/data mart must be accessible via the World Wide Web, providing adequate security. 3. Monitoring, scheduling, administrative, and management tools for the data warehouse/data mart should be included with or available for the product. 4. The RRB desires to extract the data from existing production files, flat files and other sources, manipulate and cleanse the data, load the data into the warehouse, and provide analytical, quering and reporting functions. This can be accomplished using data integrity and cleansing tools, data modeling tools, extraction and transformation tools, data movement tools, and/or in-house methods. Ability is necessary to add sources, targets, and transformations as needed. 5. The data input to the data warehouse/data mart can come from various sources including databases, flat files, and outside sources. LAN server files, VSAM files, IDMS files, and sequential data files are examples of the data file types that must be accessible. The purpose of this storage medium is to exploit the data for decision-making purposes without compromising the efficiency of the production transaction processing system. The data in the data warehouse/data mart is to be for retrieval only processing and is not "real time". It is to be available for queries and analysis. 6. Decision support tools must be available to exploit the data warehouse/data mart providing tracking of trends, statistical analysis, comparison of current and historical data, and historical data beyond what is kept and reported on in the transaction processing system. 7. Operation of the data warehouse/data mart must require only a limited amount of technical knowledge to write and maintain queries and reports. 8. The data warehouse/data martshould contain read only data. 9. The data in the data warehouse/data mart is not real time and is updated at agreed upon intervals. 10. Extraction and cleansing tools must not be dependent on Logical Record Facility (LRF) to extract data from the IDMS database. 11. The data warehouse/data mart must be accessible by a myriad of client software including but not being limited to SAS tools, EXCELL, ACCESS, CA-OPAL, etc. Companies having the ability to develop data warehouse/data mart functionality are requested to provide written notification (including telephone number for a point of contact) and detailed data regarding the proposed solution(s) to the processing office listed in this notice within 15 calendar days from the date of publication of this synopsis. Potential vendors should respond with technical literature, pricing details, and information describing the degree to which they can comply with the requirements outlined above. RRB does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this request or to pay for the information solicited. THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR OFFERS OR BIDS. No telephone calls will be accepted. The RRB shall not transmit acknowledgment of receipt of vendor submissions. Posted 05/11/99 (W-SN330278). (0131)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0031 19990513\D-0007.SOL)