iLuminate Takes a New Data Warehouse Tack

by Jason Brooks

I used Illuminate’s iCorrelate analysis tool to drill down into tables, columns or query results, and view statistics on the information.

I used iCorrelate’s expressions feature to create two copies of the recipient ID columns.

I linked one of the copied columns to the candidates table and the other to the committees table to use the tool’s Get Relations and Find Relations query options.

I used the tool’s Find Relations option to locate all the records that pointed to my results set of candidate entries.

Before I could begin exploring my campaign data, I had to load it into the iLuminate engine, a task for which Illuminate offers two tool options: the iLuminate Importer and iLook & Load.

Of the two tools, iLook & Load provided more information about my data as it entered the system, such as the totals and averages of integer-typed columns and the maximum and minimum values of individual columns.

The stock importer tool performed faster than iLook & Load, handling my 15 million-record individual contributions table in about an hour and a half, compared with about five and a half hours with iLook & Load. In either case, the engine indexes all the data at load time.

I could access any of my tables or stored queries through an external application (in my case, Microsoft Excel) via ODBC.

When one of my queries covering the 1990 to 2008 election cycles turned up only results after 2002, I modified my query and went in search of those missing results.

I could start, stop, create and switch among database files using a service monitor tool that would minimize to my system tray.

I could generate typical chart types within iCorrelate, as well as export my data sets to CSV files and create reports.