What you need if you are planning to use the
Data Warehouse

Access to the University of Pennsylvania's Data Warehouse requires 3 things.

You need all three:

• Permission
• A query tool
• Training

Permission (formal authorization to use the data)
To obtain permission to use any of the data housed in the Data Warehouse, you must complete a "Data Warehouse Access Request Form" and submit it to Data Administration. Please make sure you have all of the required signatures before you send it along. In some cases, you will also need prerequisite training before you will be able to get access. For example: users of General Ledger data must first get a BEN Financials account (and have BEN Financials training); users of Student data must first get a SRS account (and have SRS training). Note that obtaining permission is a different step from obtaining software, and getting training.

A query tool (software)
The supported query tool at the University of Pennsylvania is Business Objects. We have two types of licenses available at Penn: Business Objects full-client also known as Desktop Intelligence (Deski), and InfoView-only.

• InfoView is web-based and does not require any software installation. InfoView users cannot create or modify queries; they can run existing canned reports.
• Deski does require installing the software on your computer. Deski users have the full functionality of creating and editing queries. Please note that having the software is not enough; you still may need data training, and you will still need permission.

Training
There are two types of training: query tool training and data training.

• Formal training in the use of Business Objects, or whatever query tool you plan to use, is strongly recommended but not mandatory.
• For some data collections, data training is required before you will be given access. Consult the "training" section in each of the data collections for more detailed information. Please note that attending training it not enough; you still need permission and you may still need software installed on your computer.