Security is addressed with intranet firewalls, NT Challenge software, and SQL Server login procedures. Today, Microsoft consultants and Rural Development staff members are actively working on the design, development, and testing of new applications based on a beta version of SQL Server version 7.0. Ultimately, Rural Development plans to migrate the data warehouse to SQL Server 7.0. The most significant advantage of the new data warehouse is its ease of use. Working through their Web browsers, users select which Rural Development projects, geographic areas, and time periods they are interested in analyzing and retrieve summaries of program funding based on these variables.
Additional screens enable users to drill-down to obtain successively greater levels of detail.
Its reputation has been spreading quickly over the Web merely by word of mouth. More sophisticated analyses, such as comparing investments to census population characteristics for a particular region, were impossible to perform, Reid adds. Now, these types of answers are easy to mine from the database. Vasquez believes the Rural Development system is a model for other legacy data and Intranet projects. Future enhancements will include greatly expanded program detail, mapping, and enhanced analytic capabilities.