Data Warehouse - FAQ

These are the most frequently asked questions. This page will be continuously expanded and will be filled with user feedback.

Purpose

What does Ingenious believe when it comes to data, and data access, and data warehousing?

We firmly believe that data is the greatest treasure of our system. That's why we have made it our declared goal that everyone should be able to access their data transparently. It is the customer's data and we want to make the access and further processing as easy and pleasant as possible.

Why did you built it?

We want to offer a modern and comprehensive solution that will continue to satisfy the needs of our customers for many years to come and provide a solution to the questions of tomorrow.

Mission

What does it solve?

Up to now, the current reporting and analytics tool has only made it possible to analyse and present the data in a controlled way. We have built a solution which makes it possible to analyze the data in any way with standard compliant SQL. With this solution it is possible to satisfy customer needs that we do not know about yet.

Will it replace the current reporting?

There will always be a way to analyze and visualize your data in the Ingenious Platform with just a few clicks. However, the current solutions "Reporting" and "Analytics" will be rebuilt and modernized step by step. In the end, we will be able to offer tailor-made solutions for different customer groups.

What can I do with it, what the current reporting cannot do?

The current reporting provides a limited view of the customer data. With the new solution, customers have unrestricted access to their data and thus to all data dimensions. Using standardized SQL, they can ask any question they want to their data and create analyses that were not possible until now.

Strategy

What does it cost?

At this stage, Ingenious pays for the preparation, maintenance and storage of the data. The customer pays the costs of the queries. Ingenious reserves the right to change this in the future. More information can be found in Google's documentation on BigQuery pricing.

What are the limits?

The sky is the limit. At this point Ingenious does not define limits. Unlimited data is kept. Ingenious reserves the right to change this in the future. However, there are limits that are defined by Google BigQuery itself.

What does BETA mean?

Please read https://ingenioustechnologies.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/1423737098

How long do your store data? What retention time does the data have?

There are no plans to implement such a restriction. It is the customer's data, which can be accessed in full at any time. There will be no deletions.

What is the delay of the data sync?

We are very proud of our new product. We have put a lot of effort into making it a very great benefit for the customer. For this reason it was important to us to enable almost real-time analysis. The database is updated several times a day.

Can you ensure that the data is accurate, and there is not data discrepancy? How do you ensure this?

Yes, we can ensure this. We have built monitoring systems that check the data integrity with our other systems at any time and inform our service team in case of emergency.

Access

What do I have to do to get my data into the data warehouse?

You have nothing to worry about. Your data is already available for you. At the moment we are in the BETA phase. If you want to get an early access please contact our support.

How do I get access to BigQuery?

A Google Project and a Google Account is required to gain access. Big Query provides the technology of "Authorized Views". You are provided with a dataset (a collection of several tables), with tables for the different data types. Data access for individual Google Accounts is controlled by the access permissions on the dataset.

How do I test that my access works?

https://ingenioustechnologies.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/2733113347

When I have access, what are first steps?

https://ingenioustechnologies.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/2705326288

Can I offer this dataset to others? Where can I activate access for other users?

Yes, but at this time you need to contact our support to allow other users to access your dataset.

Is it possible to access the data without google account?

No, at this time it is necessary to have a Google Account. But we are working on a solution so that this is not necessary.

Is it possible to use groups inside of single accounts? Can I dedicate a Manager who manages access to the dataset inside of my company?

No, this is not possible at the moment. But we are working on a solution to make this possible in the future.

The data

Which data I have access to?

There are two types of tables. There are the fact tables and the dimension tables. Most analyses will take place on the fact tables.

Fact tables (operational data)

  • Ad Impressions

  • Clicks

  • Untracked Requests

  • Conversions (Currently only the financial part)

Dimension tables (master data)

  • Advertisers

  • Partners

  • Entities

  • Ad Spaces

  • Conversion-Targets

  • Tracking-Categories

  • Creatives

  • Vouchers

More about facts and dimensions: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-fact-table-and-dimension-table/

Why there are differences between the DWH based reports and UI reporting?

There will always be some differences between DWH and UI reporting.

DWH and UI reporting data are prepared by separate independent processes which run on different schedules. This can lead to differences when data of current day is taken into comparison. The other reason is that while the DWH contains the use case - neutral representation of data which is intended to be used for diversity of reports, the UI reporting is build to display the specific performance data of the platform and therefore contains appropriate restrictions and customisations.

UI reports

  • are built on daily granularity but using the time zone “Europe / Berlin” which means the days are starting and ending on different hours

  • exclude deactivated advertisers by default ( they can be included using a filter)

  • do not display uncategorized data like clicks without an AMC code, as these can not be assigned to any partnership

  • do not count unattributed commercial and analytical conversions

  • by default, do not count attributed analytical conversions ( they can be changing the conversion targets filter)

  • do not count the incorrect conversions which can be found in the separate “Conversion Errors Report”

  • do not count any page impression data (click-ins only)

  • do not count untracked data

Using it

What tools can I use to visualize data from BigQuery?

Any tool that provides a Google BigQuery Connector can be used. Google also provides a list of tools that are definitely supported. Some example tools are Google Datastudio, Tableau or Qlik. Furthermore, it is possible to export different export formats directly via the BigQuery console.

Do you have example dashboards/ reports?

At this time we are experimenting with Google Datastudio sample reports. We will inform our customers when our efforts are successful.

Misc

I don’t have or want BigQuery, what other Analytics Databases do you support?

On our platform there is the possibility to use the products "Reporting" and "Analytics" to analyze and visualize data. Furthermore there is the possibility to export data directly from the platform via the web interface as .csv or .xls. You can also use the Ingenious APIs to access your data.

Are you a BigQuery/Google reseller?

No we are not a Google or BigQuery reseller. We do not receive money from Google or any other Google related companies. We have been looking for a cloud-based solution and believe that Google BigQuery is a future-proof solution. It is a fully-managed, serverless data warehouse that enables scalable, cost-effective and fast analysis over petabytes of data and supports querying using ANSI SQL.

Where I can find more information about BigQuery?

I refer to the Google BigQuery documentation.

Can I use the BigQuery Sandbox?

I refer to the Google BigQuery documentation, which deals with the topic sandboxing.