I am often asked usually by programmers - What is Data Warehousing & how do I learn it? I explain to them we use all the same tools that you do but differently. That’s when I coined the term Data Sense. It describes the essence of Data Warehousing and separates Data Warehousing from rest of Programming. Every aspect of IT from Hardware / Software infrastructure to Design, Development and QA is done with massive data flows and need for data precession accuracy and meaning.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

The Case for Data Warehouse

DW Group - Version 1.0

The need for data warehousing is mainly caused by the limitations of transaction processing systems. These limitations of transaction processing systems are not, however, inherent. That is, the limitations will not be in every implementation of a transaction processing system. Also, the limitations of transaction processing systems will vary in how crippling they are.
· To perform server/disk bound tasks associated with querying and reporting on servers/disks not used by transaction processing systems
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· To use data models and/or server technologies that speed up querying and reporting and that are not appropriate for transaction processing
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· To provide an environment where a relatively small amount of knowledge of the technical aspects of database technology is required to write and maintain queries and reports and/or to provide a means to speed up the writing and maintaining of queries and reports by technical personnel
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· To provide a repository of "cleaned up" transaction processing systems data that can be reported against and that does not necessarily require fixing the transaction processing systems
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· To make it easier, on a regular basis, to query and report data from multiple transaction processing systems and/or from external data sources and/or from data that must be stored for query/report purposes only
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· To provide a repository of transaction processing system data that contains data from a longer span of time than can efficiently be held in a transaction processing system and/or to be able to generate reports "as was" as of a previous point in time
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· To prevent persons who only need to query and report transaction processing system data from having any access whatsoever to transaction processing system databases and logic used to maintain those databases
A firm that expects to get business intelligence, better decision making, closeness to its customers, and competitive advantage simply by plopping down a data warehouse is in for a surprise. Obtaining these next order benefits requires firms to figure out, usually by trial and error, how to change business practices to best use the data warehouse and then to change their business practices. And that can be harder than implementing a data warehouse.