Siebel Business Analytics Server Administration Guide > Connectivity and Third-Party Tools >

Importing Metadata

You can import metadata from a data source to an analytics repository. The metadata is used to establish physical table information in the Physical layer of the Administration Tool.

Metadata imports to an analytics repository have to occur through an ODBC connection to the underlying data source; native database gateways for metadata import are only supported for DB2 (using DB2 CLI) and XML. Metadata can also be imported from a text file. Metadata cannot be imported for multidimensional data sources.

For the metadata import procedure, see Process of Creating the Physical Layer from Relational Data Sources.

Using Query and Reporting Tools

You can connect to the Analytics Server with a wide variety of ODBC-compliant query and reporting tools. Connecting with a query tool is a matter of configuring a data source using the analytics ODBC driver and then using the analytics DSN to connect to a repository from the query tool.

The Presentation layer allows you to configure the presentation of a business model to be consistent with the rules and conventions of your tools to take advantage of the Analytics Server's analytical engine and data abstraction. This makes it much easier to include columns involving complex aggregation and calculation rules in queries and reports. Also, if your organization is currently using query and reporting tools, using the Analytics Server as a data source will make these tools more valuable and will simplify the work entailed when using them.