Developing a Data Warehouse Architecture

“Every data warehouse has an architecture,” says Warren Thornthwaite, a partner with Menlo Park, CA-based InfoDynamics LLC. “It's either ad hoc or planned; implied or documented. Unfortunately, many warehouses are developed without an explicit architectural plan, which severely limits flexibility.” Without architecture, subject areas don't fit together, connections lead to nowhere, and the whole warehouse is difficult to manage and change. In addition, although it might not seem important, the architecture of a data warehouse becomes the framework for product selection. Thornthwaite compares the development of a data...

Data Warehouse Architect

Employer DescriptionEWSolutions (www.EWSolutions.com) is a high-end, full service systems integrator that is completely focused on data warehousing, metadata management, enterprise architecture and data management. We pride ourselves on employing only the "best of the best" consultants at each level in our firm. Our consultants have published over 300 articles and have written multiple top selling technology books. EWSolutions is a fast growing and progressive company that has doubled in size for two consecutive years. We are committed to providing our high-achieving consultants with full life-cycle metadata repository,...

WHY DATA WAREHOUSE?

WHY DATA WAREHOUSE? You wish to achieve the goals of your company. You want to know your (potential) clients, their demands and needs. Furthermore you want to know your present and future competitors, and what they are doing to meet your clients needs. Having established your goals, you want to monitor them, in order to determine to what extent they are being achieved. You do suspect that the management information you need is available somewhere within your company, but you...

Overview of OLAP Capabilities

Oracle OLAP provides the query performance and calculation capability previously found only in multidimensional databases to Oracle's relational platform. In addition, it provides a Java OLAP API that is appropriate for the development of internet-ready analytical applications. Unlike other combinations of OLAP and RDBMS technology, Oracle OLAP is not a multidimensional database using bridges to move data from the relational data store to a multidimensional data store. Instead, it is truly an OLAP-enabled relational database. As a result, Oracle provides the benefits of a multidimensional database along with the scalability,...

Overview of Analytic SQL

Oracle has introduced many SQL operations for performing analytic operations in the database. These operations include ranking, moving averages, cumulative sums, ratio-to-reports, and period-over-period comparisons. Although some of these calculations were previously possible using SQL, the new syntax offers much better performance. This section discusses: SQL for Aggregation SQL for Analysis SQL for Modeling SQL for AggregationAggregation is a fundamental part of data warehousing. To improve aggregation performance in your warehouse, Oracle provides extensions to the GROUP BY clause to make querying and reporting...

Introduction to Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence

A data warehouse is a relational database that is designed for query and analysis rather than for transaction processing. It usually contains historical data derived from transaction data, but it can include data from other sources. It separates analysis workload from transaction workload and enables an organization to consolidate data from several sources. In addition to a relational database, a data warehouse environment includes an extraction, transportation, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution, an online analytical processing...

Data Warehouse – Data Model

Dimensional Modeling Techniques What is Dimensional Modeling? Dimensional Modeling is a logical design technique that seeks to present the data in a standard framework that is intuitive and allows for high performance access. Strengths of Dimensional Modeling Predictable, standard framework   (facts, dimensions) Gracefully extendable Standard Approaches to Standard Problems Easy management of aggregates Most Important Terminology – Data Warehouse STAR Schema - A database design that stores a central fact table surrounded...