RE: Need Help on Operational Data Store

Jared

   Oh, I wouldn't let Bill Inmon hear you say that. He coined the term Operational Data Store. I do not purport to be a data warehouse expert at the least, but several years ago I studied the literature quite a bit and tried to keep on top of the topics. And the subject has evolved some since then. At that time, there tended to be two separate camps, followers of Ralph Kimball's ideas and followers of Bill Inmon's ideas. Well, truthfully there was a third group, the rabid Fifth Normal Form advocates that insisted on fully normalizing their DW model.

   The issue that split the Inmon and Kimball camps was the ODS. The two titans of the industry even had some head-to-head debates at large conferences. Ralph always claimed that the ODS was no big deal, you probably had a loading area somewhere and if you had to give it a name, fine call it an ODS. Bill insisted very strongly that the ODS was THE crucial concept in data warehousing and if you didn't design that part correctly your data warehouse was sure to fail.

   Since I could easily read and understand Ralph's articles and I could never figure out what Bill was saying, I tended to follow Ralph's advice. Given your statements, Jared you sound like a classic Kimball follower as well.

   But the world moves on, and since the hot topic has been "real-time data warehouses", so I assume the ODS controversy is now moot. Today Inmon's big topic is the "Corporate Information Factory".

Dennis Williams
DBA, 40%OCP
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 11:20 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Dennis,

I think you got it wrong right off when you stated that there's a "lot of confusion in ODS vs. DW ".

It isn't that issue at all. No two people can agree on what an ODS is at all, much less compare it to a DW.

To me for instance, an ODS is a place to stage data for the final stages of some other process, be it a DW, or anything else.

An ODS is a rather generic term, and therefor whatever you want it to be.

Jared

On Friday 08 November 2002 07:59, dmeng_at_focal.com wrote:
> Greetings -
> I need some help with building an Operational Data Store. I know there are
> a lot of confusion in ODS vs. DW but I belong to the camp of 'ODS should
be
> used only for operational reporting, not decision support'. So while
> Kimball talks a lot about building a DW in his books, he does not cover
ODS
> much. Are there any books/websites/third parties that deal with building
an
> ODS?
>
> TIA
>
>
> Dennis Meng
> Database Administrator
> Focal Communications Corp.

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