IBM Software
White Paper
September 2012
IBM i2 Information
Exchange for Analysis
Search for Analyst’s
Notebook
Introduction
Contents
1Introduction
2 Who should read this
white paper
2 Potential benefits of
iXa Search AN
2 Is iXa Search AN available in languages other than English?
15 For more information
and contacts
Accessing multiple sources of data is a key factor for success in any
investigation. The number of data sources available to analysts is
increasing within organizations, and the information in these data
sources is often disparate and of inconsistent quality. Accessing and
searching multiple data sources can be time consuming as the analyst
needs to make numerous individual searches across the various data
sources to obtain the required information. Inconsistency of data can
make it challenging to create the perfect search that will return the
exact information required.
IBM® i2® Information Exchange for Analysis Search for Analyst’s
Notebook (iXa Search AN) represents a breakthrough for analysts
providing a single interface for access, search, visualization and
analysis of information from multiple data sources. An analyst can now
apply one search to many data sources, harvesting information from
both inside and outside the organization. This helps to enable rapid
report generation and analysis to be conducted from virtually all
available sources.
iXa Search AN is an element of the iXa Search Services technology,
IBM’s Web services platform for delivering data sharing across local
and global networks. iXa Search AN is a plug-in to IBM’s leading
analysis software IBM® i2® Analyst’s Notebook®.
IBM Software
White Paper
September 2012
Who should read this white paper
More time spent analyzing information
Simple and quick smart searching using iXa Search AN
provides more time for analysts to spend actually analyzing
the results from their searches. To aid the process of analysis,
iXa Search AN delivers rich tabular analysis tools such as
sorting, grouping and filtering that can be used to investigate
the results before they are visualized on the Analyst’s
Notebook chart.
This white paper is written for managers, data source owners
and analysts who wish to understand how iXa Search AN can
enable searching across multiple data sources for visualization
and analysis.
Potential benefits of iXa Search AN
Spend less time searching
Analysts do not have to wait for searches to complete
before being able to interact with the results. This helps to
prevent bottlenecks in the workflow and improves the
analyst’s efficiency by allowing them to continue working
during the process of data collection. Searches can also be
conducted simultaneously allowing the analyst to compare
results on screen.
iXa Search AN allows the analyst to perform a single search
across multiple disparate data sources from within Analyst’s
Notebook. This greatly increases efficiency when collecting
and collating data from across the organization. Tasks that
may have previously taken many hours, or even days, can now
take minutes. Simple HTML reports, Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets and visualizations from Analyst’s Notebook can
be created in a few clicks.
What documentation is provided?
The following documentation is provided with
iXa Search AN:
Simple searches can be created with in-built heuristics and
behaviors to improve the breadth and depth of searches. With
iXa Search AN there is no need to craft precise searches that
cater for all variations in data because this work is conducted
on behalf of the analyst.
•
•
•
iXa Search AN provides a live connection to data providing
real time information from your data sources so analysts
working on fast moving, multi-jurisdictional and collaborative
analysis can immediately get a picture of the current
information available. Responsive feedback and the ability to
work on data, even as the search is being performed, provide a
richer analytical environment.
iXa Search AN Release Notes
iXa Search AN Online help
iXa Search AN Client Administration Guide
Is iXa Search AN available in languages
other than English?
English (UK) and English (US) versions of iXa Search AN are
available at present.
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September 2012
Data Modeling
The iXa Search Services solution developed by your
organization makes this visualization of your data sources
possible. iXa Search Services technology is flexible so
organizations can be confident the visualizations offer the
most benefit to analysts.
iXa Search AN differs from many currently available
searching technologies as it provides a way to search for
information with the prime objective of visualization for
analysis. It is this fundamental data modeling capability of
iXa Search AN that allows the discovery of relationships and
patterns between entities.
iXa Search AN also introduces new technologies for
searching within multiple data sources and visualizing all
results on one or more charts. The analyst can search based
on properties rather than specific entities or link types. For
example a search for 07709 332332 may return results for
entities representing Telephones, People and Organizations,
should they contain information about that telephone
number. iXa Search AN casts a broader search across your
data sources to provide information that is more relevant to
the search. This new searching capability produces more leads
that can be investigated.
iXa Search AN can create visualizations of retrieved data in
Analyst’s Notebook because it maps data from your data
sources into structured Entities and Links. For example
entities could include Vehicles, People and Telephones and
Links that provide a relationship between the entities could
include Subscriber, Owner and Associate. Both Entities
and Links have properties that describe them. For example,
a Person entity could have a Surname, Date of Birth and
Age property.
iXa Search AN allows the analyst to expand from the selected
entities and immediately recognize relationships in the
visualization. A more detailed description of expansion can be
found in the section of this white paper.
Figure 1: Data modeled in Entity and Link format
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Single search over multiple data sources
iXa Search AN can perform a single search across multiple
data sources because of its understanding of the types of data
available. The iXa Web services shown above are created for
your organization’s iXa solution by a developer using the iXa
Web Service SDK.
iXa Search AN intrinsically understands the nature of
multiple data sources and the user interface is specifically
designed for the purpose of searching across and interacting
with multiple data sources. In order to achieve this, IBM has
standardized on a library of data elements to provide
commonality between multiple data sources.
The SDK makes it possible to align data in the multiple
data sources to a set of standard data elements recognized by
IBM i2 products.
iXa Search AN represents a significant change for analysts
gathering data from multiple, remote and disparate data
sources. Huge time savings can be achieved by performing a
single search across your organizations data sources. In
seconds an analyst can answer the question, “What does our
organization know about ‘x’?”.
Smart Searching
iXa Search AN provides Smart Searching through a simple
wizard style interface. Search templates can be specifically
tailored to your organization’s needs.
Figure 3: Step 1 - Search templates
A search template defines common search conditions, with
properties provided as shortcuts. For example, Find a Person
may be a common search defined as a search template, where
the search conditions are for a Person Last Name, Person
First Name and Date of Birth.
Figure 2: iXa Search AN architecture
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September 2012
Search conditions are displayed on the left and search results
on the right.
For example, a search with the following conditions:
Figure 5: Search conditions
Figure 4: Search conditions and results
Could potentially return:
The nature of searching for information can significantly vary
depending on what stage of the analysis is being conducted. In
the early phases of analysis, information may be vague or
sparse and hence searches may be poorly defined. As the
process of analysis continues and incoming leads provide
more information the searches can become more precise.
A telephone number has been found when searching for
Michael West because it has a property called Subscriber
containing the name of the person who subscribes to the
telephone. By providing property based searching but
returning results in terms of entities and links, the analyst is
able to immediately see more information that could be
relevant to the initial search conditions.
IBM i2’s solutions’ smart searching technology has been
created to cater for these differing styles of searching.
Name Synonyms
Since data is recorded in different ways, variations may exist in
data that is intended to represent the same person. One
common difference is the use of name synonyms. For
example, searching in a traditional system for Michael would
not normally find Mike.
Casting a wide net
Accessing and searching multiple data sources can be time
consuming as the user needs to make numerous unique
searches to obtain the required information. Inconsistency of
data can make it challenging to create the perfect search that
will return the exact information required.
Smart Searching helps to solve this problem by searching for
common name synonyms. Synonym lists are provided in iXa
Search AN, and can be extended to suit your organization’s
needs by the iXa Search Services solution administrator.
Smart Searching helps to provide searches with a simple set of
initial search conditions. The search is conducted against
multiple data sources and the results returned as a series of
entities and links. The actual execution of the search is against
the properties of these entities and links and as such the
results can be a mixture of entities and links of many types.
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September 2012
For example:
For example:
Search Condition (First Name)
Possible Results
Search Condition (Last Name)
Possible Results
Michael
Michael, Mike, Mick, Michelle,
M, M.W, etc.
West
West, Weston, Westly, Westmore, Wst etc.
John
John, Jon, Jonnie, Jonny, Jonathan, J, J.T., etc.
Watson
Watson, Watkins, Whitcomb, Woodson, Wtson etc.
Susan
Susan, Sue, Suzanne, Susanna,
S, S.K. etc.
Brown
Brown, Browne, Browning, Brownstone, Brwn etc.
Name synonyms help to overcome issues of data inconsistency
and inaccuracy by finding additional information that could
be relevant.
iXa Search AN can use sounds-like technology on properties
such as Organization Name, Street Name, Person First Name,
Person Surname, and so on. Sounds-like technology is data
source dependent because not all data sources are capable of
providing sounds-like support.
Sounds like
When recording data in a data source from conversations or
recordings, the data may be entered with transcriptional
errors. For example, the surname Wheeler may be entered
for Wealer.
Scored results
To help the analyst quickly identify the most relevant results
from their search, iXa Search AN results are scored and sorted
in order of relevance. The relevance score of each result
indicates the degree to which it matches the search conditions.
iXa Search Services supports the use of technology for
returning results that ‘sound like’ the search condition
provided by the user. This further extends the breadth of the
initial search to retrieve more information that could be
relevant. Using sounds-like technology (such as Soundex or
Metaphone), the search can find data that has been entered
with transcriptional errors and also some typographic errors.
Precise searching
Smart searching is not limited to broad searches but can be
focused on specific data sources or types of information.
When more focused searching is required to pinpoint results,
iXa Search AN has a number of features to help.
The analyst can add as many search conditions as required to
improve the accuracy of the search.
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The use of the Must Include button is particularly useful
when an analyst wants to set a high grade against a specific
condition, confident that it is correct.
Figure 9: Must Include
Data Source Select
The analyst is able to select only the Data Sources required
when searching. iXa Search AN is able to support searches on
single data sources as well as multiple data sources providing a
new level of flexibility to the analyst.
Figure 7: Add New Search Conditions
Exact Search
The analyst can choose to use the Exact Search operator to be
more precise when searching. Only results that exactly match
the search condition will be returned.
Figure 8: Exact Search
Figure 10: Selecting data sources to search
Must Include
To help the analyst to identify the search condition that is
most important to match against, the Must Include button
asserts that results must only include matches for the specified
condition. To encourage a broader search, the button is set to
may include by default.
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Save searches
The figure above illustrates how an analyst can deselect a data
source for a particular search without the need to disconnect
from it. Clicking on the Connections button allows the
analyst to connect to other data sources before executing
the search.
Once a search has been executed, it will automatically be
stored in the Recent Searches List under My Searches. The
search will contain details of search conditions, values, search
operators, and selected data sources. Users can select and save
a Recent Search to run again at a later date. This allows users
to monitor changes in information over a period of time.
Filtering
In some cases, the analyst may wish to search across multiple
data sources but filter out a particular entity type or link type
that is not of interest to the investigation. By using the
filtering functionality in iXa Search AN, analysts are able
select data types to filter out of the search.
Pre-Chart analysis
In many cases, an analyst needs to interpret and analyze
data when it is returned from a search before visualizing it.
Seeing results in a tabular form allows the results to be
quickly scanned and compared, and even copied and shared
with others.
Figure 11: Selecting data sources to search
The figure above illustrates how Law Enforcement Officers
may be filtered out of a search.
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White Paper
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iXa Search AN provides extensive tools for analysis of data
before it is added to a chart in Analyst’s Notebook. Some of
the tools provided for pre-chart analysis within this tabular
view are:
Sorting (Single and multi column)
Columns can be sorted in ascending or descending order
by clicking on the column header (shift clicking to select
multiple columns). Sorting can be used with text, numeric or
date information.
Figure 14: Single group (by data source)
Figure 12: Single column sort
Figure 13: Multi column sort
Grouping (single and multi column)
Search results can be collected together into groups to make
interpretation of results easier. Dragging a column header
into the open space above the table creates a grouping by that
column. Dragging a second column into the same space
creates a sub group. Grouping is a powerful way of breaking
down a large set of data into more easily understandable sets.
Figure 15: Multi column group (By data source and first name)
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Results Navigator
Expand
Since searches can return many different types of entities and
links, the Results Navigator provides a summarized view of
the data in the results grid. By clicking on an item in the
Results Navigator, the analyst can filter out other results.
Analysts can quickly see relationships by ‘expanding’ an entity
to find items linked to it. iXa Search AN can show expanded
results in both the Analyst’s Notebook visualization or in the
tabular view.
Filtering of results is a good way to provide some focus for the
information that has been returned from the search.
Grid expansion
By selecting result(s) from the table, the analyst can expand to
another table. The first column in the expanded table shows a
pictorial representation of the entity-link-entity relationship.
Items are described in the expansion table with color coded
columns to represent Entity A (left entity), Link and Entity B
(right entity):
Figure 16: Results Navigator
Toolbar
To accelerate common tasks, iXa Search AN provides a
toolbar accessible from Analyst’s Notebook.
Figure 18: Table expansion
Figure 17: iXa Search AN toolbar
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Chart expansion
Show Details
The analyst can select one or more entities from Analyst’s
Notebook and use the iXa Search AN toolbar to quickly
expand items related to the selection. The results of the
expand are first shown in a table. This allows the analyst to
perform some pre-chart analysis on the results before adding
them to the chart.
When an analyst wishes to know more about an item in
the results or an item on the Analyst’s Notebook chart, iXa
Search AN can provide a HTML report based on the
selection. By selecting multiple results, amalgamated reports
and be shown and can be saved as a HTML file or pasted
into Microsoft Word.
Figure 20: Show Details Web report
The iXa Search AN reports provide a simple medium
for sharing information across the organization and help
to quickly summarize information gathered from many
data sources.
Find Similar
In order to accelerate the process of collating relevant data
from multiple data sources, iXa Search AN provides shortcuts
that allow an analyst to select a chart item and find items
similar to it using its properties as search conditions.
Figure 19: Chart expansion
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IBM Software
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Efficient analysis
Once an analyst has isolated an item of interest, they may
want to see if there are others like it in their connected data
sources. With the Find Similar Using command, an analyst
can quickly create a new search based on the information
in hand. This helps to quickly follow leads and broaden
the investigation.
Smart Searching across multiple data sources, some of which
may not be located within your organization, could result in
searches that take many minutes to complete. iXa Search AN
provides feedback to the analyst regarding the progress of the
search in each data source. It also allows the analyst to interact
with the results as soon as they are available.
Results are returned to iXa Search AN as soon as they are
ready. Those that are scored highly will automatically migrate
to the top of the table to help the analyst focus on the most
relevant results. Time is not wasted waiting for slow data
sources to respond.
iXa Search AN allows the analyst to work on many searches at
the same time, this helps to provide results comparisons and
encourages a more efficient working environment.
Figure 21: Find Similar (from tabular results)
The Find Similar Using command takes the information from
the selected item and applies it to any one of the search
templates currently available to the analyst. There is no need
to re-type the information into a new search because iXa
Search AN automatically does this.
The Find Similar Using functionality is available from both
the tabular results and the chart. It is possible to create a new
chart item, and then ask iXa Search AN to search across
multiple data sources using this new item as the seed for
the search.
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How does iXa Search AN compare to iBridge?
The following matrix helps to describe the key differences
between iBridge and iXa Search AN:
iXa Search AN has been created to provide support to analysts
wishing to search across multiple data sources with one search
from one interface. An understanding of the disparate nature
of data has been incorporated into iXa Search Services which
is built on Web services technology. iXa Search Services
technology enables Analyst’s Notebook to make connections
to any type of data source via the intranet or internet, allowing
for local, regional and global data access.
Description
IBM® i2® iBridge is aimed at analysts requiring access
specific database technologies (MS Access, SQL Server and
Oracle) available from within a LAN or WAN. iBridge
Designer has been created to provide an intuitive interface
for the creation of configurations for iBridge. Access to
databases can quickly be established for searching,
visualization and analysis.
iXa Search AN
iBridge
Smart Searching
a
r
Find Similar
a
r
Secure connection to data
sources over internet
a
r
Single search across multiple
data sources
a
r
Multi data source Show Details
a
r
Multi data source expand
a
r
Pre-Chart Analysis
a
r
Export Results to MS Excel
a
r
Connectivity to other data sources
(including non relational sources, Web services)
a
r
Single database access
a
a
Exact Searching
a
a
Association Charts and
Temporal Analysis
a
a
Connectivity to MS Access,
SQL Server and Oracle
a
a
Expand
a
a
a
Complex Query1
r
a
Find Path in data
r
a
Share Searches
r
a
Save Searches
a
a
Show Details
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White Paper
September 2012
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White Paper
September 2012
For more information
To learn more about IBM i2Information Exchange for
Analysis Search for Analyst’s Notebook, please contact your
IBM representative, or visit: www.ibm.com
To learn more about all of the IBM Smarter Cities solutions,
visit: ibm.com/smartercities
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012
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Produced in the United States of America
October 2012
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