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This book delivers what every data warehousing project participant needs most: a thorough overview of today's best solutions, and a reliable step-by-step process for building warehouses that meet their objectives. It answers key questions asked by everyone involved in a data warehouse initiative. And, with over 75 figures, it doesn't just tell you how to get the job done: it shows you. Walk through migration strategies and scenarios, including 12 key implementation steps. Review crucial management and support issues, including techniques for problem resolution, capacity planning, security, and backup. Discover state-of-the-art schema design and metadata development techniques. Choose optimal hardware, software, and platforms--and evolve your data warehouse as new technologies mature. Preview metadata interchange standards and tomorrow's Web-based solutions. Whatever your data warehousing goals, this book can help you achieve them faster and at lower cost. A part of the Enterprise Computing Institute Series.
"Don't Talk to Our People..." and Other Warehousing Death Knells
Working with Analysis Services Cubes in SQL Server
Click here for a sample chapter for this book: 0130809020.pdf
I. INTRODUCTION.
1. The Enterprise IT Architecture.The Past: Evolution of Enterprise Architectures. The Present: The IT Professional's Responsibility. Business Perspective. Technology Perspective. Architecture Migration Scenarios. Migration Strategy: How Do We Move Forward?
2. Data Warehouse Concepts.Gradual Changes in Computing Focus. The Data Warehouse Defined. The Dynamic, Ad Hoc Report. The Purposes of a Data Warehouse. A Word about Data Marts. A Word about Operational Data Stores. Data Warehouse Cost-Benefit Analysis / Return On Investment.
II. PEOPLE.
3. The Project Sponsor.How Will a Data Warehouse Affect our Decision-Making Processes? How Does a Data Warehouse Improve My Financial Processes? Marketing? Operations? When Is a Data Warehouse Project Justified? What Expenses Are Involved? What Are the Risks? Risk-Mitigating Approaches. Is My Organization Ready for a Data Warehouse? How Do I Measure the Results?
4. The CIO.How Do I Support the Data Warehouse? How Will My Data Warehouse Evolve? Who Should Be Involved in a Data Warehouse Project? What Is the Team Structure Like? What New Skills Will My People Need? How Does Data Warehousing Fit into My IT Architecture? How Many Vendors Do I Need to Talk To? What Should I Look for in a Data Warehouse Vendor? How Does Data Warehousing Affect My Existing Systems? Data Warehousing and its Impact on Other Enterprise Initiatives. When Is a Data Warehouse Not Appropriate? How Do I Manage or Control a Data Warehouse Initiative?
5. The Project Manager.How Do I Roll Out a Data Warehouse Initiative? How Important Is the Hardware Platform? What Technologies Are Involved? Do I Still Use Relational Databases for Data Warehousing? How Long Does a Data Warehousing Project Last? How Is a Data Warehouse Different from Other IT Projects? What Are the Critical Success Factors of a Data Warehousing Project?
III. PROCESS.
6. Warehousing Strategy.Strategy Components. Determine Organizational Context. Conduct Preliminary Survey of Requirements. Conduct Preliminary Source System Audit. Identify External Data Sources (If Applicable). Define Warehouse Rollouts (Phased Implementation). Define Preliminary Data Warehouse Architecture. Evaluate Development and Production Environments and Tools.
7. Warehouse Management and Support Processes.Define Issue Tracking and Resolution Process. Perform Capacity Planning. Define Warehouse Purging Rules. Define Security Measures. Define Backup and Recovery Strategy. Set Up Collection of Warehouse Usage Statistics.
8. Data Warehouse Planning.Assemble and Orient Team. Conduct Decisional Requirements Analysis. Conduct Decisional Source System Audit. Design Logical and Physical Warehouse Schema. Produce Source-to-Target Field Mapping. Select Development and Production Environment and Tools. Create Prototype for This Rollout. Create Implementation Plan for this Rollout. Warehouse Planning Tips and Caveats.
9. Data Warehouse Implementation.Acquire and Set Up Development Environment. Obtain Copies of Operational Tables. Finalize Physical Warehouse Schema Design. Build or Configure Extraction and Transformation Subsystems. Build or Configure Data Quality Subsystem. Build Warehouse Load Subsystem. Set-up Data Warehouse Schema. Set Up Data Warehouse Metadata. Set Up Data Access and Retrieval Tools. Perform the Production Warehouse Load. Conduct User Training. Conduct User Testing and Acceptance.
IV. TECHNOLOGY.
10. Hardware and Operating Systems.Parallel Hardware Technology. Hardware Selection Criteria.
11. Warehousing Software.Overview. Middleware and Connectivity Tools. Extraction Tools. Transformation Tools. Data Quality Tools. Data Loaders. Database Management Systems. Metadata Repository. Data Access and Retrieval Tools. Data Modeling Tools. Warehouse Management Tools. Source Systems.
12. Warehouse Schema Design.OLTP Systems Use Normalized Data Structures. Dimensional Modeling for Decisional Systems. Two Types of Tables: Facts and Dimensions. A Schema Is a Fact Table and Its Related Dimension Tables. Facts Are Fully Normalized, Dimensions Are Denormalized. Dimensional Hierarchies and Hierarchical Drilling. The Time Dimension. The Grain of the Fact Table. The Fact Table Key Is the Concatenation of Dimension Keys. Aggregates or Summaries. Dimensional Attributes. Multiple Star Schemas. Core and Custom Tables.
13. Warehouse Metadata.Metadata Are a Form of Abstraction. Why Are Metadata Important? Metadata Types. Versioning. Metadata as the Basis for Automating Warehousing Tasks.
14. Warehousing Applications.The Early Adoptors. Types of Warehousing Applications. Specialized Applications of Warehousing Technology.
V. WHERE TO NOW?
15. Warehouse Maintenance and Evolution.Regular Warehouse Loads. Warehouse Statistics Collection. Warehouse User Profiles. Security and Access Profiles. Data Quality. Data Growth. Updates to Warehouse Subsystems. Database Optimization and Tuning. Data Warehouse Staffing. Warehouse Staff and User Training. Subsequent Warehouse Rollouts. Chargeback Schemes. Disaster Recovery.
16. Warehousing Trends.Continued Growth of the Data Warehouse Industry. Increased Adoption of Warehousing Technology by More Industries. Increased Maturity of Data Mining Technologies. Emergence and Use of Metadata Interchange Standards. Increased Availability of Web-Enabled Solutions. Popularity of Windows NT for Data Mart Projects. Availability of Warehousing Modules for Application Packages. More Mergers and Acquisitions Among Warehouse Players.
VI. Appendices.
Appendix A. R/olapXL¨ User,s Guide.VII. REFERENCES & FURTHER READING.
Preface
This book is intended for Information Technology (IT) professionals who have been hearing about or have been tasked to evaluate, learn or implement data warehousing technologies.
Far from being just a passing fad, data warehousing technology has grown much in scale and reputation in the past few years, as evidenced by the increasing number of products, vendors, organizations, and yes, even books, devoted to the subject. Enterprises that have successfully implemented data warehouses find it strategic and often wonder how they ever managed to survive without it in the past.
As early as 1995, a Gartner Group survey of Fortune 500 IT managers found that 90 percent of all organizations had planned to implement data warehouses by 1998. Virtually all Top-100 US banks will actively use a data warehouse-based profitability application by 1998. Nearly 30 percent of companies that actively pursue this technology have created a permanent or semipermanent unit to plan, create, maintain, promote, and support the data warehouse.
If you are an IT professional who has been tasked with planning, managing, designing, implementing, supporting, or maintaining your organization's data warehouse, then this book is intended for you. The first section introduces the Enterprise Architecture and Data Warehouse concepts, the basis of the reasons for writing this book.
The second section of this book focuses on three of the key People in any data warehousing initiative: the Project Sponsor, the CIO, and the Project Manager. This section is devoted to addressing the primary concerns of these individuals.
The third section presents a Process for planning and implementing a data warehouse and provides guidelines that will prove extremely helpful for both first-time and experienced warehouse developers. The fourth section of this book focuses on the Technology aspect of data warehousing. It lends order to the dizzying array of technology components that you may use to build your data warehouse. The fifth section of this book opens a window to the future of data warehousing.
This book also comes with a CD-ROM that contains two software products. Please refer to the readme.txt file on the CD-ROM for any last minute changes and updates.
The enclosed software products are: