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In my last entry in this category, I described automorphic data models and how the Data Vault modeling components is one of the architectures/data models that will support dynamic adaptation of structure. In this entry I will discuss a little bit about the research I'm currently involved in, and how I am working towards a prototype of making this technology work.
If you're not interested in the Data Vault model, or you don't care about "Dynamic Data Warehousing" then this entry is not for you.
Continue reading "Self-adapting Data Models" »
Here is another installment of the secrets of the masters. Quite frequently customers and IT alike complain about how difficult it is to gather business requirements. They discuss the pain of having to "get together" for a day, or for a week-long process to write down and document business processes, and ultimately their needs and desires for a new BI/EDW system. Any good analyst worth their salt has battle-scars from negotiating these treacherous grounds.
We've all walked in to an environment with a blank white-board and asked: business, please give me your requirements, only to be confronted with: "What can you provide to us?"
Continue reading "Part 8: Secrets of the Masters - Business Requirements" »
It's not often in our industry you get a chance to read about successes. Too much press is given to negative types of issues. This entry is about successful implementations.
Would you like your IT team to build "Data marts in about an Hour?", How about full EDW's with AS-IS star schemas in 2 weeks (regardless of size of source systems, or number of systems to integrate)? Would you as a business user like to hear that your new requirements for reporting can be met within a 2 day turnaround? How about your IT team becoming a profit center for the stake-holder rather than a cost center?
Sound too good to be true? It's NOT! Honestly, this is the first time in a long time that I'm excited again to be in IT. I'm working with several customers in which we have made these things a reality. This entry is about how we did it, and how you can do it too.
Continue reading "IT Agility and Repsonsiveness to the Business" »
When I teach, I frequently discuss temporal based data sets - after all, that's a big piece of what data warehousing and BI is about - Data Over Time. But when examining the database engines ability to "retrieve" specific data sets as a snapshot in time, it seems there is a problem. There appears to be no "consistent" manner in which to retrieve these layers for use by the business. We are left to create physical dimensions and physical fact tables - aggregate our data up to higher levels (to shrink the amount of data) so that joins can execute cleanly and efficiently across information. So why then, after all these years haven't vendors properly implemented the ANSI-SQL-92 standard of "PERIOD"?
Database Vendors, are you listening? There is a serious revenue gain to be had by implementing these feature sets...
Continue reading "True Temporal Based RDBMS engines" »
Any time we get back to secrets, we seem to fall right back to the category of standards, standardization, measurement and enablement. The old saying is: "if you can't measure it, you can't monitor it, and if you can't monitor it - you don't know when it's broke, or you can't optimize it/fix it." Something like this anyhow.
The common feedback from the general project implementation community is usually: "Why do I need to standardize? Why should I document? Won't it take more time to follow standards than to build rapidly?"
Continue reading "Part 7: Secrets of the Masters, Templates for Projects" »
For a long time Dr Ralph Kimball has spoken about subject oriented design. Many have made a living off of producing subject based data marts. One of the problems this has lead to is a series of loosely coupled stove-piped answer sets that are then "discussed" in the light of an enterprise data warehouse. I've been teaching, talking and writing about (over the last 10 years at least) a notion called Functionally Oriented Design. In this entry I will briefly introduce my notions of these concepts.
Continue reading "Design: Subject Oriented Versus Function Oriented" »
My book on the Business of Data Vault Modeling, approach and archtitecture is finally available after 7 years. If you'd like to purchase it, you can grab a copy from LULU.com (here: http://www.lulu.com/content/1371769) If you'd like a signed copy, please contact me directly with all your information. Bill Inmon has kindly written the forward for the book.
The Data Vault Model and approach to implementation is the next paradigm shift in accordance with DW2.0
Continue reading "The Business of Data Vault Modeling (Book) Available" »
Before we get to Dynamic Data Warehousing, we need to first reach Operational Data Warehousing. Now I realize that I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to use or even possibly abuse this term. In fact if you search on the term today you'll get tons and tons of hits. I do however believe that Data Warehousing and BI as an industry have gotten slow, and become somewhat of a laggard in terms of keeping up with technology. Just look at the adoption curve of DW2.0... It simply isn't there yet (wish it were). Anyhow, in this blog let's take another look at the ODW as Bill Inmon and I are beginning to discuss it.
Continue reading "Operational Data Warehousing on the way..." »
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