Components

The elements listed below are SEI's components. Since these components are used to retrieve and analyze data, it is important you particularly pay attention to their roles in order to benefit from the most efficient configuration for faster query requests.

The image below illustrates the SEI architecture and how the components communicate.

Client Layer

Excel Add-in

The Excel Add-in application, as the name indicates, is an Add-in for Excel that enables users to build Excel reports using data provided by SEI. The Excel Add-in requires Microsoft Excel 2013 or later.

Application Layer

SEI Application

The SEI application is the main Business Intelligence application. The application is one responsible to handle requests from the web browsers and different clients. Some modules of the SEI application are deployed and hosted on Microsoft IIS and some other modules are hosted as Windows services. The application can be installed on one or multiple servers depending on the chosen installation scenario. Refer to Installation scenarios to determine which installation type applies to you.

The SEI application could be installed on any web server, but we strongly recommend having a dedicated server for SEI. It could also be installed on the DMZ if you want to do your BI analysis from the outside of the organisation/network to SEI.

The Web Client interface is typically used by end users for inquiry and reporting purposes.

Web Central Point Configurator

This application enables to modify the Central Point configuration (such as the Description, SMTP, and Databases) after installing SEI. For example, the configuration may have to be edited if there is a change on the SQL Server hosting the SEI database or the SMTP server.

Central Point Repository and Database

The SEI Central Point is a repository configured as a Windows Shared Folder (by the installation package) that should be accessible in Read and Write mode by the user running the SEI Bi service.

The Central Point configuration (SEI) database contains general configuration data such as user access data. It is usually installed on the same server as the BI Service.

Database Layer

SEI Database

The SEI database contains the required tables for the application to function.

License Server

The License Server is a database, BI License, that stores the license number that was activated and the concurrent users who can be connected.

A License Server can be used for several Central Points.

OLAP Database

The OLAP Database, SEICube, contains the OLAP Cubes with the extracted data from external data sources used to produce reports.