Dennis,
We are active participants in the process. We are also making an offer
to someone with an extensive background in developing data warehouses,
which will help me to sleep much more comfortably at night :)
Rachel
- DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM> wrote:
> Rachel
> - Glad Inmon's book is working for you. I have only read (or more
> correctly attempted to read) his articles, which can be found at
> http://www.datawarehousing.com/, or at least they previously were
> available.
> - Just be aware that when you switch from reading Inmon or one of
> his
> followers to Kimball or one of his followers, that the meaning of
> some terms
> change.
> - The oldest Kimball articles at
> http://www.intelligententerprise.com/ports/search_webhouse.shtml are
> the
> best to start with because they describe the fundamentals of data
> warehouse
> design.
> - I still think the email list is one of the best resources.
> For help with list commands, send a message
> to <mailto:dwlist-request_at_datawarehousing.com> with the
> word "help" in the body of the message.
> (I'm listing these for the benefit of others on this list)
> Not to discourage you, but companies often take the approach of
> yours, and
> hire consultants to build the site. They tend to go into a corner and
> develop it and then unveil it when they are "finished", collect their
> check
> and leave. If you ask questions, it is easy for them to blow past you
> because they are the experts. So from that standpoint, don't panic,
> just go
> along for the ride and what you can learn. But it is good to read up
> on
> warehousing so you can ask intelligent questions and don't sound like
> a
> dinosaur by asking questions like "whaddya mean it isn't
> normalized?". In
> DW, the real participants are the ones that interview the potential
> users
> and try to locate data the users will find useful. The DBA tends to
> be the
> one that gets ordered to load 100-gig of data every night. DW work is
> like a
> lot of other DBA work, but quite different in some respects. At least
> with
> the email list, if something sounds odd, you can ask some real people
> for
> some input.
> Dennis Williams
> DBA
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 8:13 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Outdated?
>
>
> Dennis,
>
> I have on my desk, all in varying stages of being read:
> Inmon's book Building the Data Warehouse (very understandable)
>
> Kimball's articles from his site and from the
> Intelligententerprise.com
> site (somewhat understandable, I think you need a base from which to
> read his articles). His books are on order and should arrive today
>
> Tim Gorman's book Essential Oracle8i Data Warehousing (this I haven't
> started, as Tim tells me to read it AFTER I have a basic
> understanding
> of data warehousing)
>
> The Oracle8i Data Warehousing documentation (actually pretty readable
> and understandable)
>
> Ya think I might be over-researching this stuff and panicking a bit?
>
> Rachel
>
> --- DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM> wrote:
> > Ian,
> >
> > - In the beginning was the data warehouse and yeah it was good.
> It
> > would
> > solve all corporate problems and would encompass all corporate data
> > so all
> > corporate minions would see the same data.
> > - But yeah it took so long to create the corporate data warehouse
> > that
> > management despaired and canceled the project. Or by the time the
> > monster
> > data warehouse came blinking and straining into the daylight all
> the
> > users
> > said that the company had evolved in the meanwhile and the
> warehouse
> > was
> > obsolete.
> > - So data warehouses gained a bad rep from corporate managers and
> > yeah
> > none would fain to propose the conception of a data warehouse for
> > fear of
> > castigation.
> > - Then some marketing interns bribed a DBA to send them data
> > weekly. And
> > they stored this data in a database and lo, their superiors were
> > impressed.
> > - Everyone was in awe of the marketing database, but none dared
> > tarnish it
> > by speaking the name which shall not be mentioned, so it was
> > christened a
> > "data mart".
> > - And lo, the data marts multiplied and were fruitful. And the
> DBA
> > cursed
> > the day she was weak and did give data to the marketing interns.
> > - Then another prophet did arise and did challenge the prophet
> > Kimball.
> > His name was Inmon. And he did claim to be the progenitor of data
> > warehouses. And therefore all should do data warehousing his way
> and
> > use his
> > terms.
> > - And great confusion arose over the land. And many debates
> ensued,
> > including some face to face between Inmon and Kimball. And terms
> such
> > as
> > Operational Data Store (ODS) were bandied about.
> > - And some said that queries against the ODS were acceptable and
> > others
> > deemed them forbidden. And some said that if it looks like a data
> > warehouse
> > and smells like a data warehouse it verily indeed is a data
> > warehouse.
> > - And consultants warred against consultants and did call the
> other
> > consultants ignoramuses in front of management such that nobody
> knew
> > what
> > anybody was talking about.
> > - And the DBAs said that creating a data warehouse or data mart
> was
> > not
> > nearly as hard as figuring out what to call it.
> >
> > The moral of the story is to figure out what you need to do and be
> > aware
> > that different authors use the same terms for different purposes
> and
> > coin
> > their own terms. Personally, I have understood everything that
> > Kimball has
> > written and have never been able to read one of Inmon's articles to
> > the end.
> > But maybe that is just me.
> > Dennis Williams
> > DBA
> > Lifetouch, Inc.
> > dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 2:38 PM
> > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> > Outdated?
> >
> >
> > Ian,
> >
> > Good question. I think that I've seen more recenct references in
> > articles
> > that state the current thinking of DW/DM. I'm sure that I've seen
> > Inmon
> > refer to them that way, or maybe it was Richard Winter?
> >
> > Anyway, I guess that part is a bit dated. There is so much good
> > information
> > in that book though, that it's still worth its weight in gold. You
> > won't
> > find too many
> > publications for $60 that will take you step by step through
> building
> > an
> > entire
> > data warehouse, including the infrastructure.
> >
> > Jared
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "MacGregor, Ian A." <ian_at_SLAC.Stanford.EDU>
> > Sent by: root_at_fatcity.com
> > 05/21/2002 05:48 PM
> > Please respond to ORACLE-L
> >
> >
>
=== message truncated ===
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Received on Thu May 23 2002 - 12:43:15 CDT
