High speed user inquiry

[esearing]

Recently we have recieved request to speed up and expand reporting capability for large volumes of data. We currently have a solid data warehouse for data storage and a mirror reporting system. Lately the requests have been much more than the current system could handle in a reasonable amount of time.

Example: Banking scenario
Q. How often do customers visit ATM machines vs transact with a teller with criteria X, Y, and Z.
Considerations: Millions of customers, millions of transactions per day arranged in monthly time blocks, multiple tables. Selection Criteria dynamically dependent upon previous inputs...Y limited by X, Z limited by Y.

What development/process/tools would be needed to answer this question in a few minutes? What are the database concerns? What kind of Hardware would typically be used?
Looking for general guidence not definitive answers.

Currently using Oracle/FOCUS/Sybase Databases with WebFocus Reporting Software in an NT environment but tend to do more summary level of data reporting rather than analytical reports at the transaction level. Typically long running reports were run in a development environment and then comiled for the end user. End user now wants full power. eSearing.com
version 2.something now available

 

[Z3]

I think a really good analyst can write this SQL in a few minutes, but then it's really up to the database. If you know end user is going to use this type Query everyday, you can pre-caculate these into some kinds of multi-dimensional cubes like Cognos at summary level. If you can not determine ahead of time and SQL could be very complicated you probably should consider high-end tool like MicroStrategy. You would probably need some powerful databases geared towards data warehousing, like Teradata which is good at scanning large datasets. You will also need to arrange the data in a relational format so it's easy for the tools to configure it.