Case Study: The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) achieves rapid XML POS integration and near-real-time restocking with Teradata

U.S. Defense Commissary Agency Rapidly Adapts to New XML Data Sources from Point-of-Sale Systems with Informatica PowerCenter Data Integration Platform

The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), which serves more than 12 million U.S. military customers across 263 commissaries, needed to integrate a phased $200M POS upgrade (CARTS) that produced complex XML/XSD and flat-file data alongside legacy NCR files into its Teradata enterprise data warehouse. The agency also wanted to move from nightly batch loads to near‑real‑time updates, all without deploying a new integration platform or disrupting operations.

DeCA extended its existing Informatica PowerCenter implementation—leveraging native XML processing and reusable mappings—so a small team could rapidly adapt mappings and go live with the CARTS feeds in November 2006. The solution supported simultaneous legacy and new POS sources, enabled 10–60 minute update windows (processing up to ~15M XML rows in 30 minutes), and delivered faster restocking and forecasting, reduced development costs, and improved data accuracy and trust.

The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)

Stan Ferguson

Chief, Data Management Division