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Technical System requirements

Users of the BIQ software are divided into two groups: consumers and publishers. Consumers use the BIQ Viewer to browse and analyze data. This data is prepared by publishers using the BIQ Loader. In many cases, the same person or persons perform these two functions. If you are both a publisher and a consumer, then follow the guidelines set forth for publishers. If you are a consumer, then follow the consumer guidelines.

2.1 Estimating dataset size

For both publishers and consumers, the system requirements vary by several factors:

The number of transactions in the dataset
The number of dimensions the dataset
Total nodes (entries) in all of the dimensions

The most critical resource is RAM. If you have too little, your machine will spend most of its time swapping, and little or no useful work will get done. Unfortunately, estimating RAM is quite complicated. The following table provides a rough size estimation based on the factors listed above. If you need a more detailed analysis, please contact BIQ. We have tools to help calculate more exact requirements based on your dataset parameters.

Use the following table to size your dataset, then use the tables in later sections to identify your specific system requirements.

		Dimension element count
		10k	100k	500k	1M
TransactionCount	100k	Small	Small	Medium	Large
	1M	Small	Medium	Medium	Large
	3M	Medium	Medium	Large	Very Large
	5M	Medium	Large	Very Large	Very Large

2.1.1 Publisher guidelines

The following table provides estimated system requirements for publishers, based on dataset size.

	Dataset size
	Small	Medium	Large	Very large
CPU	733mhz	1ghz	2ghz	>2ghz and/or dual processor
RAM	384mb	512mb	1gb	2gb or more
Free disk after BIQ install	2gb	4gb	10gb	20gb or high speed disk array

2.1.2 Consumer guidelines

The following table provides estimated system requirements for consumers, based on dataset size.

	Dataset size
	Small	Medium	Large	Very large
CPU	733mhz	1ghz	1ghz	2ghz
RAM	256mb	512mb	1gb	1-2gb
Free disk after BIQ install	1gb	2gb	4gb	6gb

3 Miscellaneous functions

3.1 Licensing

Each copy of BIQ has a unique license key. License keys are of the form:

xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx

where "x" can be any digit from 0 to 9, or a letter from a to f. Type your license key exactly as printed, with dashes, when prompted for it. There are no lower-case "L" (ELL) characters in the license key. Such characters are ONEs, not ELLs.

You'll need to enter the license key once when first using BIQ. It is unlikely, but there are circumstances where you'll be asked to enter a new license key. In order to do this, a license key management function is available from the Admin menu.