Production environment
Production environment Azure SQL is not accessible to any external tool.
Exporting FO data
There are the following ways to get data from FO:
- BYOD (bring your own database): export Entities from FO to Azure SQL (requires creation of entities that are periodically pushed to Azure SQL). This option is going to be discontinued by Microsoft.
- BYOL (bring your own lake): export Tables or Entities from FO to Azure Data Lake; it is available for Entity export and in Private Preview for Tables. This is going to be the ultimate way of getting data from FO as it is working on system level with very small latency.
- Copy Production to Tier 2 environment: if Tier 2 is available (not being used for testing) then this is the fastest way to get data from FO. Tier 2 data are in Azure SQL database that must be provisioned before copying data.
For now, we will be doing POCs from Tier 2 environment.
Getting Metadata and Financials dimensions
BI4Dynamics requests access to FO services that provide:
- FO database Metadata (AOT): used for DW customization
- Structure of Financial dimensions: used for mapping dimensions to transactional tables across DW
Getting metadata from another environment may take from 15 minutes to more than an hour. It is needed only once as metadata are saved to BI instance locally and retrieved from FO again only if metadata, that will be used in modeling, have been changed.
Accessing Tier 2 environment in self-service deployment
Microsoft is providing self-service deployments in LCS and no longer RDC to Tier 2 environment (Self-service deployment). Environments are managed by Microsoft. Access to the database is provided in just-in-time manner on request (Enable just in time database access). According to our information access is granted for 8 hours, several times.