Badger Analytics is live!

On March 5, Badger Analytics officially went live! The new cloud analytics environment uses the platform Snowflake, and the new data warehouse will eventually replace InfoAccess.  

The go-live of Badger Analytics was a huge milestone for the modernization of UW-Madison’s analytics environment. The first release included: 

  • Snowflake Security Access Model 
  • General ledger and budget data (and associated Tableau visualizations for P&L and People & Stuff) 
  • Lumen 
  • Academic Structure 
  • DARS 

During the initial phase, a small number of test users were onboarded to begin the transition of their work away from InfoAccess and towards the new environment. One of the test users, Mike Zenzis appreciating the elimination of the bottleneck he used to experience while running queries in InfoAccess.  

The most remarkable thing I found when testing Badger Analytics was that my largest queries were up to 20 times faster than similar InfoAccess queries. It reduced the longest wait times from around 20 minutes to around one minute,” said Zenz. 

Increased speed is one of many advantages to which future Badger Analytics users may look forward. Some visualizations are already running off of Snowflake, and Tableau developers may notice faster extracts and the elimination of the need for nightly extraction processes for their workbooksAdditionally, in Badger Analytics, the security model is based on the Tableau security model, which will help to streamline access for users 

The information in Badger Analytics is currently running in parallel to InfoAccess. Users can expect to receive information about the Badger Analytics onboarding process during the upcoming phases and may continue their work in InfoAccess without disruptionThe deprecation of InfoAccess, tentatively planned for December 2023, will not take place until the migration of all components into Badger Analytics is complete. 

For questions, please send an email to info@data.wisc.edu. 

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