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Microsoft SQL Server Customer Solution Case Study 9-Terabyte Database Moved to Microsoft SQL Server for Performance, Lower TCO Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Healthcare Customer Profile Based in Nashville, Tennessee, AIM Healthcare Services is a claims cost management consulting firm for the healthcare industry. Business Situation AIM needed to replace its data mining infrastructure to support future growth of and functionality for its 9-terabyte database. Solution AIM migrated from a UNIX\Oracle solution to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 running on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition. Benefits Ease of migration Enterprise-class performance Lower total cost of ownership Great development tools “Adding things like a reporting solution or OLAP services, the costs just kept building up on the Oracle side while they remained the same on the SQL Server side.” Adam Solesby, Director of Strategic Development, AIM Healthcare Services AIM Healthcare Services helps insurance companies and hospitals hold down expenses by mining through terabytes of data looking for billing errors, duplicate payments, coding mistakes, and other abnormalities. As its database topped 9 terabytes, and demand for its services grew, the company needed to rewrite its supporting applications and provide a more scalable infrastructure. AIM decided to move its data from a UNIX\Oracle 9i stack to a solution based on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Enterprise Edition, running on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003, Enterprise Edition. The supporting applications were written using Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) was used for automating the database transfer from Oracle. AIM is seeing enterprise-grade performance while enjoying a lower total cost of ownership. “The SQL Server Migration Assistant, along with its Schema and Data Migrator, and its SQL Converter feature, was an important migration aid, automatically converting 99 percent of our database code.” Robert Francis, Data Architect, AIM Healthcare Services Situation AIM Healthcare Services is a data intelligence and claims cost management firm with a national reputation as a responsive, knowledgeable partner bringing added-value benefits to every relationship. AIM specializes in the reduction of healthcare costs in the public and private sectors by identifying, validating, recovering, and preventing claims overpayments. AIM utilizes patent-pending technology in its specialized discovery process. In 2003, AIM identified in excess of U.S.$610 million in overpaid claims for its clients, and in 2004 recovered more than $1 billion. The company performs data mining operations against some 9 terabytes of data to help its customers identify billing errors such as overpayments, coding errors, subrogation cases, and potential fraud. AIM originally deployed its data mining operations using an Oracle 9i database running on the UNIX operating system. But as demand for the services and the size of the database grew, the company saw a need to rewrite its data mining and supporting applications. In preparing for the new development project, AIM considered using other databases, operating systems, and hardware. The company had solid experience with the UNIX operating system, and it had been experimenting with Linux. However it had also been moving increasingly more of its operations to the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 database running on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system because AIM had been impressed with the performance, reliability, ease of use, and licensing costs. SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003 are part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software. A key concern was database migration. The company needed to find a way to easily migrate its 9 terabytes of data without disrupting day-to-day operations. As AIM considered which database and operating system to use, it wanted to ensure that the new solution would: Support ease of migration. Provide enterprise-class performance across its very large database. Offer a powerful development environment. Provide lower total cost of ownership. Solution AIM Healthcare Services decided to migrate its 9-terabyte database, which supports about 200 internal users, from Oracle to SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition hosted on Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, and running on an Intel-based computer. The decision mapped well with the fact that in recent years the company had been progressively moving more of its operations away from the UNIX operating systems to Microsoft Windows® operating system, and had been moving its Oracle databases to SQL Server. Although the company considered Linux as an option for the operating system, it decided that it wanted to take advantage of its growing knowledge of the Windows operating system, and not introduce a new operating system and the administrative complexities that would come with it. AIM, which creates most of its applications in-house, also wanted to use Microsoft development tools. The company also was impressed with SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA), a tool that helps customers to migrate their applications from other databases to SQL Server easily and in a predictable manner. The tool automates almost every aspect of database migration. As a result, the time, cost, and risks associated with migrating to SQL Server can be greatly reduced. “Since moving to SQL Server we’ve been able to respond much more quickly to development requests from our customers.” Adam Solesby, Director of Strategic Development, AIM Healthcare Services SSMA consists of the following major components: Migration Analyzer—evaluates the complexity of the migration project Schema and Data Migrator and SQL Converter—performs database conversion and provides a powerful integrated development environment for crossplatform database developers Migration Tester—provides automated validation of the migration process The entire 9-terabyte solution is hosted on a single instance of SQL Server, running on an IBM xSeries 445 computer with eight 32-bit processors and 32 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Storage is on an EMC CLARiiON 4700 storage area network (SAN). AIM created a multitier data mining solution, which it describes as a hybrid between a data warehouse and an online transaction processing (OLTP) system. The solution architecture includes: Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) Tier. AIM uses SQL Server Data Transformation Services (DTS) along with Transact-SQL (TSQL) transform procedures to perform ETL processes against data imported from some 120 customers. Data comes from a range of mainframes and other sources, and all requires custom translation. One DTS package is used for each data source. Although AIM has prescribed formats, most of its customers prefer to send the data in native formats, requiring transformation. Data is loaded in batches that contain a month’s worth of paid claims. These feeds can be as large as 6 GB at a time. The company processes several hundred feeds per month. It also processes inserts and updates throughout the day. Staging Tier. Much of the data transformation is done in the staging tier. Data transformation and validation is performed using SQL Server stored procedures. The transformations are complex and often require up to 15 passes through the data. T-SQL provides a powerful platform for developing the complex, high-performance, set-based processing that must be performed on the data. Data Tier. From staging, the data is loaded into normalized tables on the data tier. Complex, proprietary mining procedures are then run iteratively on the data. AIM Having decided on its operating system and database, the company completely rewrote its data mining and supporting applications, using the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 development system and the Microsoft .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is an integral component of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system that provides a programming model and run time for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications. Data mining is at the heart of AIM operations, as the company on a weekly or monthly basis—depending upon the customer— imports billing data and launches algorithms against the data, searching for inappropriately paid claims, duplicate payments, contractual issues such as subrogation, and a range of other factors including abnormalities that might indicate mistakes or fraud. The data mining is performed using the company’s own searching algorithms and through incorporating business rules for specific customers. The company created its own data mining application using Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, and executes much of the code through SQL Server stored procedures. The company also used the Microsoft Visual C#® development tool. performs more than 300 passes through the data. Business Logic Tier. AIM created a custom application to apply its general data mining algorithms and customer-specific business rules. It uses Microsoft ADO.NET, the suite of data access technologies included in the Microsoft .NET Framework class libraries for database connectivity. Data Abstraction Layer. The data abstraction layer is a Web service implemented in Microsoft .NET connection software that allows the Web application to request objects rather than having to query data. This database abstraction gives the company the flexibility to move data to new databases without needing to change application code. Presentation Tier. Users view data through the presentation tier, which includes an internally developed application created using Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft ASP.NET, a set of technologies in the Microsoft .NET Framework for building Web applications and Web services. The Presentation Tier is hosted on Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0, the built-in Web server in Windows Server 2003. SQL Server Reporting Services is used for creating operational reports for IT. The company is planning expanded use of Reporting Services with a future expansion of data warehouse functionality beyond data mining. The new data warehouse supports about 250 ad-hoc queries per day. These are expensive mining queries that exhaustively search through the entire dataset. They are complex and often involve as many as 15 joins. The online systems execute hundreds of thousands of transactions per day. Benefits Since moving its data mining infrastructure from the UNIX\Oracle stack to the Windows\SQL Server\Intel solution, AIM Healthcare Services has enjoyed a number of benefits, including ease of migration, enterprise-class performance across its very large database, lower total cost of ownership, and powerful development tools. The company also is looking forward to deploying SQL Server 2005 because of features including SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Table Partitioning, Data Mining, and SQL CLR. Ease of Migration When dealing with terabytes of data, ease of migration becomes a big consideration. AIM benefited from using the SSMA because it automates almost every aspect of database migration. As a result, the time, cost, and risks associated with migrating the data were greatly reduced. By using the Migration Analyzer, a feature of Migration Assistant that examines the Oracle database, AIM was able to understand the migration challenge very clearly. The information provided by the assessment included the findings that conversion would involve some: 600 tables 1,450 stored procedures 150 functions 1,000 exception blocks 236,000 lines of code in stored procedures The Migration Analyzer determined that SSMA could automatically convert 99 percent of the database code from Oracle PL/SQL code to SQL Server T- SQL code. Even with 99 percent of the code conversion accomplished automatically, the project was still quite demanding because of the size and complexity of the database code and its extensive use of dynamic SQL, which could not be directly converted by the SQL Converter. “Everything “We load massive kept amountsto pointing ofadata.… lower total And at theofsame cost ownership time we by have 100 moving to concurrent a solution usersupon built hitting SQL theServer, database the Windows withoperating queries.… SQL Server system, andstill Intel-based provides users with subsecond hardware.” response times.” Adam Solesby, Director of Strategic Development, AIM Healthcare Services Robert Francis, Data Architect, AIM Healthcare Services The team reviewed and modified code, eliminating some constructs that didn’t perform as expected and removing some obsolete code. When it was necessary to provide alternate implementations for part of the code that couldn’t be converted directly, the SQL Converter was able to emit the revised behavior during the conversion whenever a pattern was detected in the Oracle-based business logic that couldn’t be converted directly to T-SQL. The fact that these changes could be applied to all applicable instances represented another advantage of the SSMA SQL Converter. “The SQL Server Migration Assistant, along with its Schema and Data Migrator, and its SQL Converter feature was an important migration aid, automatically converting 99 percent of our database code,” says Robert Francis, Data Architect at AIM Healthcare Services. “SQL Server Migration Assistant allowed us to migrate this highly complex database in a most economical manner.” An impressive element of the project was that the database was growing rapidly during the migration. “In less than one year we were able to migrate a well-established application from Oracle to SQL Server while at the same size tripling the size of the database,” says Adam Solesby, Director of Strategic Development at AIM Healthcare Services. “We increased the capacity of our claims processing system and simultaneously lowered our operational costs.” Enterprise-class Performance SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition gives AIM the robustness and performance it needs to support its very large database, which is already at 9 terabytes and is still growing. The database supports about 200 internal users, about half of which are concurrent users. “The interesting thing about our database is that it is both an OLTP database and a data warehouse,” says Robert Francis, Data Architect at AIM Healthcare Services. “We load massive amounts of data—hundreds of millions of rows—24 hours a day, into this database. And at the same time we have 100 concurrent users hitting the database with queries through our Web-based application. Throughout all of this, SQL Server still provides users with subsecond response times. We’re seeing enterprise-grade performance.” The company plans to extend access to its database reporting to customers. “With from 5 to 10 persons per customer accessing our database, we’re looking at supporting an additional 6,000 to 12,000 users,” says Solesby. “All of our testing shows that SQL Server will handle this growth.” Lower Total Cost of Ownership When AIM examined licensing costs, the more closely it looked, the more attractive SQL Server became. “From the very beginning Oracle was a more expensive option than SQL Server,” says Solesby. “But with Oracle’s cafeteria pricing, in which you pay additional fees to add functionality and features that come standard with SQL Server, we saw that we could end up paying several times more than what we would pay for SQL Server. Adding things like a reporting solution or OLAP [online analytical processing] services, the costs just kept building up on the Oracle side while they remained the same on the SQL Server side.” Apart from licensing considerations, AIM was also interested in finding a more affordable hardware platform. As the company had progressively moved more of its IT infrastructure to Windows-based systems, it had experienced excellent performance and reliability using Intel-based servers. This made it all the more attractive to move its data mining operations off of the more expensive Sun computer it had been using. “At the same time we were considering enhancing our disaster recovery infrastructure,” says Solesby. “Even though we were looking at specialized hardware for disaster recovery, we found that Intel-based systems were considerably less expensive than UNIX-based solutions. And, again the licensing costs and support costs are less. What we pay Microsoft to run SQL Server is a lot less than what we would pay Oracle to accomplish the same tasks. Everything kept pointing to a lower total cost of ownership by moving to a solution built upon SQL Server, the Windows operating system, and Intelbased hardware.” Powerful Development Tools Microsoft development tools such as Visual C#, Visual Studio .NET 2003, and the .NET Framework are much appreciated by AIM developers. “Since moving to SQL Server we’ve been able to respond much more quickly to development requests from our customers,” says Solesby. “Microsoft obviously puts a lot of investment into its development tools and into making sure everything integrates well across its products,” says Francis. “That provides great value to us by making it faster and easier to create solutions for our customers. These tools, along with the lower licensing costs, reduce the entry barrier for doing our own research and development. Our developers can experiment with the database and try different techniques. All of this helps us better serve our customers.” Moving to SQL Server has also made it easier for developers and database administrators (DBAs) to work together. “We no longer have the big stone wall between DBAs and developers,” says Solesby. “We can take advantage of the mindshare between the two. I think Microsoft does a good job of making easy things easy, while not removing your ability to do hard things as well. So we don’t waste a lot of time with archaic controls, yet the DBAs have all the power they need when it counts. Efficiencies like this really add up.” Looking Ahead to SQL Server 2005 AIM Healthcare Services plans an early transition to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, the next-generation data management and analysis platform, to take advantage of features, including: SQL Server 2005 SSIS. SQL Server 2005 introduces a complete redesign of DTS, now called SSIS that provides a comprehensive ETL platform. “With SSIS some of the things we now do with stored procedures in the staging tier can be performed as part of ETL,” says Francis. SQL Server 2005 Table Partitioning. New for SQL Server 2005, the Table Partitioning feature enhances scalability for very large databases. “As we prepare to grow beyond our 9-terabyte database, we see Table Partitioning as a great scalability feature,” says Solesby. SQL Server 2005 Data Mining. SQL Server 2005 introduces a number of new data mining algorithms. “We currently perform data mining using our own custom code and stored procedures,” says Francis. “We would very much like to take advantage of the data mining algorithms in SQL Server 2005.” SQL Server 2005 SQL CLR. The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is hosted from within the database with SQL Server 2005. “Most of our development is done using Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, so we are very interested in using CLR from within SQL Server,” says Solesby. “We like the idea of reducing the number of times we have to leave the database to access an application. CLR will help us stay within the database.” For More Information Microsoft Windows Server System For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server infrastructure software is designed to support end-to-end solutions built on Windows Server 2003. It creates an infrastructure based on integrated innovation, Microsoft’s holistic approach to building products and solutions that are intrinsically designed to work together and interact seamlessly with other data and applications across your IT environment. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your business. For more information about AIM Healthcare products and services, call (615) 5031000 or visit the Web site at: www.aimhealth.com For more information about Windows Server System, go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem Software and Services Microsoft Windows Server System Hardware − Microsoft Windows Server 2003, IBM xSeries 445 computer with eight 32Enterprise Edition bit processors and 32 GB of RAM − Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise EMC CLARiiON 4700 SAN Edition Microsoft Visual C# Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Technologies − Microsoft Internet Information Services version 6.0 − Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services − Microsoft .NET Framework − © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, Visual Studio, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Document published October 2005