UCF’s Data and Analytics Reporting Ecosystem (DARE) is a centralized enterprise data lake and warehouse environment powered by Microsoft Azure Cloud Services and architected for big data, modern reporting, and advanced analytics. DARE’s capabilities of advanced big data storage, modern business intelligence (BI) reporting, enhanced data manipulation, and enabling other detailed analytics provide the university with the tools to drive informed decision-making and improve overall operational efficiency
Data Lake
The Data Lake serves as the low cost raw data staging area for the DARE environment and includes both structured (database tables) and unstructured (e.g. CSV) data. A key benefit of Data Lakes is their ability to house large quantities of data enabling the use of big data for analytics and reporting.
Data Warehouse
The Data Warehouse contains refined structured, curated data, ideal for dashboard development, cross-functional strategic analytics, and other complex reporting. This data is organized for ease of use by analysts, and is governed by UCF Data Governance
Analytics with Optimized Data
As a platform, the well-designed, vetted, and transformed data within DARE allows for better and more complex reporting and analysis using advanced data engineering tools, machine learning, and integration with tools like Microsoft Power BI.
Implementation Timeline
Phase 3 – Data Models, Reporting and Machine Learning
Development is currently underway for the next set of enhancements to DARE. These enhancements will build out critical data models, redesign reporting, and develop new machine learning models that take advantage of DARE’s capabilities. This phase will also put in place the necessary governance structures to maintain DARE long-term.
Phase 2 – Project-Based Data Integrations COMPLETE
System and data sources needed for crucial university initiatives or projects were implemented into the DARE warehouse.
Phase 1 – Initial Implementation COMPLETE
The initial rollout of the system and architecture to support future activities was completed on June 30, 2022.
DARE Architecture
DARE FAQ
What is DARE?
DARE is a centralized data delivery system that data engineers and data analysts can leverage to house and report on key business operations or strategic initiatives. AIP is continuously working to identify critical use cases and data to store and make available across the university to support key initiatives or other key business processes.
Who should use DARE?
Examples of DARE power users include:
- Research and data analysts
- PowerBI or other data visualization users who generate reports or insights for their areas
- Data scientists who need data or a platform to use advanced analytics
- Data engineers or those who need to extract, load, or transform data for consumption
What are the core technology components of DARE?
The underlying architecture supporting DARE is powered by Microsoft Azure services. These services combine to form a unified environment for end-to-end analytics reporting and advanced analytics in DARE. These components include:
- Azure Data Factory – Ingest, load, and transform data for usage from near-limitless situations
- Azure Data Lake – Storage of high-volume data in all forms
- Azure Synapse Analytics – Enterprise analytics service that accelerates time to insight across data warehouses and big data systems
- PowerBI – Enterprise reporting and visualization tool that seamlessly integrates to DARE
- Azure Machine Learning – Enables data scientists and developers to quickly build, deploy, and manage high-quality models
How is data governed in DARE?
Access and the inventorying of data resources in DARE will be managed by UCF Data Governance.
Contact DAREsupport@ucf.edu for help with DARE reporting.