Multi-Application Query Tool (MQT)
by Greenlight
Overview
Integration with PC 2.5
Control testing and monitoring based on queries
Overview
Multi-Application Query Tool (MQT) is a query repository to create custom ad-hoc queries in a heterogeneous applications environment. The majority of organizations leverage different ERPs (Oracle, PeopleSoft), legacy applications etc. To have an effective process control, organizations need to monitor controls within all the different applications that are in use.
During an audit engagement the auditors need to analyze data for accessing the effectiveness of a control. For this purpose, auditors or control testers often create their own queries, extract data and analyze the results. Also, the business process owners may have to create query based control testing and monitoring to support their business. These queries could check configurations or analyze transaction data like "sales orders processed within the limits of customer credit limits". This MQT query feature provides the ability to add new control testing and monitoring that are not covered by the pre-delivered automated scripts.
MQT acts as a broker and invokes the query in the target application and sends the results to PC2.5 application. The following types of application codes are supported by MQT:
- PL/SQL procedures defined in an Oracle database
- SQL scripts
- People code that are developed for PeopleSoft applications
The tool may use any of the following methods to connect to the database or application:
- JDBC
- ODBC
- HTTP
- Web Service
- Custom device drivers
There are two possible ways queries can be invoked from PC 2.5. First is through the ad-hoc query option and second through the scheduler. Query execution is synchronous when invoked from the ad-hoc query option in PC 2.5 and asynchronous, when invoked through a scheduler.
The MQT tool is capable of handling reasonable amounts of results data. The tool provides the ability to restrict the number of rows returned, which is determined by the tester.
