Data Warehousing For Dummies E-Book

Thomas C. Hammergren

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 512

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

Data warehousing is one of the hottest business topics, and there’s more to understanding data warehousing technologies than you might think. Find out the basics of data warehousing and how it facilitates data mining and business intelligence with Data Warehousing For Dummies, 2nd Edition.

Data is probably your company’s most important asset, so your data warehouse should serve your needs. The fully updated Second Edition of Data Warehousing For Dummies helps you understand, develop, implement, and use data warehouses, and offers a sneak peek into their future. You’ll learn to:

• Analyze top-down and bottom-up data warehouse designs
• Understand the structure and technologies of data warehouses, operational data stores, and data marts
• Choose your project team and apply best development practices to your data warehousing projects
• Implement a data warehouse, step by step, and involve end-users in the process
• Review and upgrade existing data storage to make it serve your needs
• Comprehend OLAP, column-wise databases, hardware assisted databases, and middleware
• Use data mining intelligently and find what you need
• Make informed choices about consultants and data warehousing products

Data Warehousing For Dummies, 2nd Edition also shows you how to involve users in the testing process and gain valuable feedback, what it takes to successfully manage a data warehouse project, and how to tell if your project is on track. You’ll find it’s the most useful source of data on the topic!

Leseprobe

Data Warehousing For Dummies® , 2nd Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

Why I Wrote This Book

How to Use This Book

Part I: The Data Warehouse: Home for Your Data Assets

Part II: Data Warehousing Technology

Part III: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Part IV: Data Warehousing Projects: How to Do Them Right

Part V: Data Warehousing: The Big Picture

Part VI: Data Warehousing in the Not-Too-Distant Future

Part VII: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

About the Product References in This Book

Part I: The Data Warehouse: Home for Your Data Assets

Chapter 1: What’s in a Data Warehouse?

The Data Warehouse: A Place for Your Data Assets

Classifying data: What is a data asset?

Manufacturing data assets

Data Warehousing: A Working Definition

Today’s data warehousing defined

A broader, forward looking definition

A Brief History of Data Warehousing

Before our time — the foundation

The 1970s — the preparation

The 1980s — the birth

The 1990s — the adolescent

The 2000s — the adult

Is a Bigger Data Warehouse a Better Data Warehouse?

Realizing That a Data Warehouse

(Usually) Has a Historical Perspective

Chapter 2: What Should You Expect from Your Data Warehouse?

Using the Data Warehouse to Make Better Business Decisions

Finding Data at Your Fingertips

Facilitating Communications with Data Warehousing

IT-to-business organization communications

Communications across business organizations

Facilitating Business Change with Data Warehousing

Chapter 3: Have It Your Way: The Structure of a Data Warehouse

Ensuring That Your Implementations Are Unique

Classifying the Data Warehouse

The data warehouse lite

The data warehouse deluxe

The data warehouse supreme

To Centralize or Distribute, That Is the Question

Chapter 4: Data Marts: Your Retail Data Outlet

Architectural Approaches to Data Marts

Data marts sourced by a data warehouse

Top-down, quick-strike data marts

Bottom-up, integration-oriented data marts

What to Put in a Data Mart

Geography-bounded data

Organization-bounded data

Function-bounded data

Market-bounded data

Answers to specific business questions

Anything!

Data mart or data warehouse?

Implementing a Data Mart — Quickly

Part II: Data Warehousing Technology

Chapter 5: Relational Databases and Data Warehousing

The Old Way of Thinking

A technology-based discussion: The roots of relational database technology

The OLAP-only fallacy

The New Way of Thinking

Fine-tuning databases for data warehousing

Optimizing data access

Avoiding scanning unnecessary data

Handling large data volume

Designing Your Relational Database for Data Warehouse Usage

Looking at why traditional relational design techniques don’t work well

Exploring new ways to design a relational-based data warehouse

Relational Products and Data Warehousing

IBM Data Management family

Microsoft SQL Server

Oracle

Chapter 6: Specialty Databases and Data Warehousing

Multidimensional Databases

The idea behind multidimensional databases

Are multidimensional databases still worth looking at?

Horizontal versus Vertical Data Storage Management

Data Warehouse Appliances

Data Warehousing Specialty Database Products

Cognos (An IBM company)

Microsoft

Oracle

Sybase IQ

Vertica

Chapter 7: Stuck in the Middle with You: Data Warehousing Middleware

What Is Middleware?

Middleware for Data Warehousing

The services

Should you use tools or custom code?

What Each Middleware Service Does for You

Data selection and extractions

Data quality assurance, part I

Data movement, part I

Data mapping and transformation

Data quality assurance, part II

Data movement, part II

Data loading

Specialty Middleware Services

Replication services for data warehousing

Enterprise Information Integration services

Vendors with Middleware Products for Data Warehousing

Composite Software

IBM

Informatica

Ipedo

Microsoft

Oracle

Sybase (Avaki)

Part III: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Chapter 8: An Intelligent Look at Business Intelligence

The Main Categories of Business Intelligence

Querying and reporting

Business analysis (OLAP)

Data mining

Dashboards and scorecards

Other Types of Business Intelligence

Statistical processing

Geographical information systems

Mash-ups

Business intelligence applications

Business Intelligence Architecture and Data Warehousing

Chapter 9: Simple Database Querying and Reporting

What Functionality Does a Querying and Reporting Tool Provide?

The role of SQL

Technical query tools

User query tools

Reporting tools

The idea of managed queries and reports

Is This All You Need?

Designing a Relational Database for Querying and Reporting Support

Vendors with Querying and Reporting Products for Data Warehousing

Business Objects (SAP)

Cognos (IBM)

Information Builders

Microsoft

Oracle

Chapter 10: Business Analysis (OLAP)

What Is Business Analysis?

The OLAP Acronym Parade

Business analysis (Visualization)

OLAP middleware

OLAP databases

First, an Editorial

Business Analysis (OLAP) Features: An Overview

Drill-down

Drill-up

Drill-across

Drill-through

Pivoting

Trending

Nesting

Visualizing

Data Warehousing Business Analysis Vendors

IBM

MicroStrategy

Oracle

Pentaho

SAP

SAS

Chapter 11: Data Mining: Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Off to Mine We Go

Data Mining in Specific Business Missions

Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence

Data Mining and Statistics

Some Vendors with Data Mining Products

Microsoft

SAS

SPSS

Chapter 12: Dashboards and Scorecards

Dashboard and Scorecard Principles

Dashboards

Scorecards

The Relationship between Dashboards, Scorecards, and the Other Parts of Business Intelligence

EIS and Key Indicators

The Briefing Book

The Portal Command Center

Who Produces EIS Products

Part IV: Data Warehousing Projects: How to Do Them Right

Chapter 13: Data Warehousing and Other IT Projects: The Same but Different

Why a Data Warehousing Project Is (Almost) Like Any Other Development Project

How to Apply Your Company’s Best Development Practices to Your Project

How to Handle the Uniqueness of Data Warehousing

Why Your Data Warehousing Project Must Have Top-Level Buy-In

How Do I Conduct a Large, Enterprise-Scale Data Warehousing Initiative?

Top-down

Bottom-up

Mixed-mode

Chapter 14: Building a Winning Data Warehousing Project Team

Don’t Make This Mistake!

The Roles You Have to Fill on Your Project

Project manager

Technical leader

Chief architect

Business requirements analyst

Data modeler and conceptual/logical database designer

Database administrator and physical database designer

Front-end tools specialist and developer

Middleware specialist

Quality assurance (QA) specialist

Source data analyst

User community interaction manager

Technical executive sponsor

User community executive sponsor

And Now, the People

Organizational Operating Model

Chapter 15: You Need What? When? — Capturing Requirements

Choosing between Being Business or Technically Driven

Technically-Driven Data Warehousing

Subject area

Enterprise data modeling

Business-Driven Business Intelligence

Starting with business questions

Accessing the value of the information

Defining key business objects

Building a business model

Prototyping and iterating with the users

Signing off on scope

Chapter 16: Analyzing Data Sources

Begin with Source Data Structures, but Don’t Stop There

Identify What Data You Need to Analyze

Line Up the Help You’ll Need

Techniques for Analyzing Data Sources and Their Content

Analyze What’s Not There: Data Gap Analysis

Determine Mapping and Transformation Logic

Chapter 17: Delivering the Goods

Exploring Architecture Principles

What’s an architecture?

What’s an adaptable architecture?

Understanding Data Warehousing Architectural Keys

People and their roles

Consistent delivery process

Standard delivery platform

Assessing Your Data Warehouse Architecture

What are you building?

How are you building it?

Is the delivery automated?

Architecting through Abstraction

Chapter 18: User Testing, Feedback, and Acceptance

Getting Users Involved Early in Data Warehousing

Using Real Business Situations

Ensuring That Users Provide Necessary Feedback

After the Scope: Involving Users during Design and Development

Understanding What Determines User Acceptance

Part V: Data Warehousing: The Big Picture

Chapter 19: The Information Value Chain: Connecting Internal and External Data

Identifying Data You Need from Other People

Recognizing Why External Data Is Important

Viewing External Data from a User’s Perspective

Determining What External Data You Really Need

Ensuring the Quality of Incoming External Data

Filtering and Reorganizing Data after It Arrives

Restocking Your External Data

Acquiring External Data

Finding external information

Gathering general information

Cruising the Internet

Maintaining Control over External Data

Staying on top of changes

Knowing what to do with historical external data

Determining when new external data sources are available

Switching from one external data provider to another

Chapter 20: Data Warehousing Driving Quality and Integration

The Infrastructure Challenge

Data Warehouse Data Stores

Source data feeds

Operational data store (ODS)

Master data management (MDM)

Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

Dealing with Conflict: Special Challenges to Your Data Warehousing Environment

Chapter 21: The View from the Executive Boardroom

What Does Top Management Need to Know?

Tell them this

Keep selling the data warehousing project

Data Warehousing and the Business-Trends Bandwagon

Data Warehousing in a Cross-Company Setting

Connecting the Enterprise

Chapter 22: Existing Sort-of Data Warehouses: Upgrade or Replace?

The Data Haves and Have-Nots

The first step: Cataloguing the extract files, who uses them, and why

And then, the review

Decisions, Decisions

Choice 1: Get rid of it

Choice 2: Replace it

Choice 3: Retain it

Caution: Migration Isn’t Development — It’s Much More Difficult

Beware: Don’t Take Away Valued Functionality

Chapter 23: Surviving in the Computer Industry (and Handling Vendors)

How to Be a Smart Shopper at Data Warehousing Conferences and Trade Shows

Do your homework first

Ask a lot of questions

Be skeptical

Don’t get rushed into a purchase

Dealing with Data Warehousing Product Vendors

Check out the product and the company before you begin discussions

Take the lead during the meeting

Be skeptical — again

Be a cautious buyer

A Look Ahead: Data Warehousing, Mainstream Technologies, and Vendors

Chapter 24: Working with Data Warehousing Consultants

Do You Really Need Consultants to Help Build a Data Warehouse?

Watch Out, Though!

A Final Word about Data Warehousing Consultants

Part VI: Data Warehousing in the Not-Too-Distant Future

Chapter 25: Expanding Your Data Warehouse with Unstructured Data

Traditional Data Warehousing Means Analyzing Traditional Data Types

It’s a Multimedia World, After All. . . .

How Does Business Intelligence Work with Unstructured Data?

An Alternative Path: From Unstructured Information to Structured Data

Chapter 26: Agreeing to Disagree about Semantics

Defining Semantics

Emergence of the Semantic Web?

Preparing for Semantic Data Warehousing

Starting Out on Your Semantic Journey

Business intelligence semantic layer management

Business rules management

Chapter 27: Collaborative Business Intelligence

Future Business Intelligence Support Model

Knowledge retention

Knowledge discovery

Knowledge proliferation

Leveraging Examples from Highly Successful Collaboration Solutions

Rate a report

Report relationships

Find a report

Find the meaning

Shared interests — shared information

Visualization

The Vision of Collaborative Business Intelligence

Part VII: The Part of Tens

Chapter 28: Ten Questions to Consider When You’re Selecting User Tools

Do I Want a Smorgasbord or a Sit-Down Restaurant?

Can a User Stop a Runaway Query or Report?

How Does Performance Differ with Varying Amounts of Data?

Can Users Access Different Databases?

Can Data Definitions Be Easily Changed?

How Does the Tool Deploy?

How Does Performance Change If You Have a Large Number of Users?

What Online Help and Assistance Is Available, and How Good Is It?

Does the Tool Support Interfaces to Other Products?

What Happens When You Pull the Plug?

Chapter 29: Ten Secrets to Managing Your Project Successfully

Tell It Like It Is

Put the Right People in the Right Roles

Be a Tough but Fair Negotiator

Deal Carefully with Product Vendors

Watch the Project Plan

Don’t Micromanage

Use a Project Wiki

Don’t Overlook the Effect of Organizational Culture

Don’t Forget about Deployment and Operations

Take a Breather Occasionally

Chapter 30: Ten Sources of Up-to-Date Information about Data Warehousing

The Data Warehousing Institute

The Data Warehousing Information Center

The OLAP Report

Intelligent Enterprise

b-eye Business Intelligence Network

Wikipedia

DMReview.com

BusinessIntelligence.com

Industry Analysts’ Web Sites

Product Vendors’ Web Sites

Chapter 31: Ten Mandatory Skills for a Data Warehousing Consultant

Broad Vision

Deep Technical Expertise in One or Two Areas

Communications Skills

The Ability to Analyze Data Sources

The Ability to Distinguish between Requirements and Wishes

Conflict-Resolution Skills

An Early-Warning System

General Systems and Application Development Knowledge

The Know-How to Find Up-to-Date Information

A Hype-Free Vocabulary

Chapter 32: Ten Signs of a Data Warehousing Project in Trouble

The Project’s Scope Phase Ends with No General Consensus

The Mission Statement Gets Questioned after the Scope Phase Ends

Tools Are Selected without Adequate Research

People Get Pulled from Your Team for “Just a Few Days”

You’re Overruled When You Attempt to Handle Scope Creep

Your Executive Sponsor Leaves the Company

You Overhear, “This Will Never Work, but I’m Not Saying Anything”

You Find a Major “Uh-Oh” in One of the Products You’re Using

The IT Organization Responsible for Supporting the Project Pulls Its Support

Resignations Begin

Chapter 33: Ten Signs of a Successful Data Warehousing Project

The Executive Sponsor Says, “This Thing Works — It Really Works!”

You Receive a Flood of Suggested Enhancements and Additional Capabilities

User Group Meetings Are Almost Full

The User Base Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing

The Executive Sponsor Cheerfully Volunteers Your Company as a Reference Site

The Company CEO Asks, “How Can I Get One of Those Things?”

The Response to Your Next Funding Request Is, “Whatever You Need — It’s Yours.”

You Get Promoted — and So Do Some of Your Team Members

You Achieve Celebrity Status in the Company

You Get Your Picture on the Cover of the Rolling Stone

Chapter 34: Ten Subject Areas to Cover with Product Vendors

Product’s Chief Architect

Development Team

Customer Feedback

Employee Retention

Marketplace

Product Uniqueness

Clients

The Future

Internet and Internet Integration Approach

Integrity

Data Warehousing For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

by Thomas C. Hammergren and Alan R. Simon

Data Warehousing For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Tom Hammergren is known worldwide as an innovator, writer, educator, speaker, and consultant in the field of information management. Tom’s information management and software career spans more than 20 years and includes key roles in successful business intelligence and information management solution companies such as Cognos, Cincom, and Sybase. Tom is the founder of Balanced Insight, Inc., a leading vendor of business intelligence lifecycle management software and services that also works on innovation in semantically driven business intelligence.

While working for Sybase, Hammergren helped design and develop WarehouseStudio, a comprehensive set of tools for delivering enterprise data warehousing solutions. At Cincom, Tom helped deliver the SupraServer product line to market, one of the first fully distributed data management solutions for highly survivable network implementations. During an earlier position at Cognos, he was one of the founding members of the PowerPlay and Impromptu product teams.

Tom has published numerous articles in industry journals and is the author of two widely read books, Data Warehousing: Building the Corporate Knowledge Base and Official Sybase Data Warehousing on the Internet: Accessing the Corporate Knowledge Base (both from International Thomson Computer Press).

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mother and father. Thank you both for the foundation and direction growing up — and, most importantly, for always supporting me in my life endeavors, no matter how crazy they have been or are. You are the best — all my love!

Author’s Acknowledgments

Writing a book is much harder than it sounds and involves extended support from a multitude of people. Though my name is on the cover, many people were ultimately involved in the production of this work. As I began to think of all the people to whom I would like to express my sincere gratitude for their support and general assistance in the creation of this book, the list grew enormous.

There are those that are most responsible for making this book a reality: Kyle Looper, Acquisitions Editor; Nicole Sholly, Project Editor; and Carole Jelen McClendon of Waterside Productions, my trusted agent for more than 10 years.

The most important thank-you is to my wife, Kim, and loving children, Brent and Kristen. They created an environment in which I could successfully complete this book — an accomplishment that I share with them and one that forced all of us to sacrifice a lot.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Nicole Sholly

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Copy Editor: Laura K. Miller

Technical Editor: Russ Mullen

Editorial Managers: Kevin Kirschner, Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Samantha K. Allen, Reuben W. Davis, Nikki Gately, Joyce Haughey, Melissa K. Jester, Sarah Philippart

Proofreaders: Dwight Ramsey, Nancy L. Reinhardt

Indexer: Sharon Shock

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

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Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

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Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

The data warehousing revolution has been underway for over ten years within information technology (IT) departments around the world. If you’re an IT professional, or you’re fashionably referred to as a knowledge worker (someone who regularly uses computer technology in the course of your day-to-day business operations), data warehousing is for you! If you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, you might be aware of the tools that access the data warehouse — business intelligence tools. Data Warehousing For Dummies, 2nd Edition, guides you through the overwhelming amount of hype about this subject to help you get the most from data warehousing.