Data Warehousing
Case studies, whitepapers, and insights into data warehousing, data warehouse appliances, enterprise data warehousing and green data warehousing.
Bill Inmon is recognized as the Father of the Data Warehouse and was voted as "One of the Ten IT People Who Mattered in the Past Forty Years" by Computer World Magazine in 2007. He's written 46 books and 650 articles on the topics, and been involved with various business successes.
OK. It is time to take out a sheet of paper and a pencil and put your books away. It is time for a closed book pop quiz. Data warehouse has been growing and maturing at a rapid pace. It is time to make sure we are up to speed on what's new in data warehousing.
Data Warehouse Appliances are changing the way in which companies manage and access their data. The huge variety of products that are available can be slightly bewildering. The purpose of this very helpful study is to analyze some trends in data warehousing and related product development.
Most Recent Data Warehousing
The world of Data Warehouse Appliances is rapidly evolving, making the task of choosing the right appliance for your circumstances rather daunting. Colin White (founder of BI Research) suggests that the following principles should always be kept in mind when selecting an appliance:
The world of computers is immature. Computers have been around since the 1950’s.Prior to that there was no computing. Compare the computing profession to other professions and there is no contest. Go to Rome and see the works that are standing today that were wrought by engineers two thousand years ago. Go to Egypt and look at the pyramids and look at the hieroglyphics on the wall. Much of the writing on the wall is from an accountant discussing how much grain is owed the Pharoah.
In most companies, there is a wealth of unstructured textual information. There are documents of many kinds found in many places. There are reports. There are articles. There are spreadsheets. There are contracts. In a word there are many documents of many types in many places in the corporation.
It's not often that data warehousing is involved in the front page news. As important and as powerful as data warehousing is, it simply is a back room exercise in most places. It is an infrastructure rather than a proactive, in your face, part of life.
Many managers are extremely reluctant to integrate company data. The 'solution that many of them come up with is the ever elusive virtual data warehouse. This is where a single query is sent to several distributed databases. Bill Immon points out that following this method is not only incredibly wasteful (since it requires a huge amount of system resources) but also ultimately counterproductive (since the data that is delivered will still have to be integrated in order to make sense of it).
One of my hobbies is in looking at the books on people's bookshelves when I am in their office. The books say a lot about the person. Some people have no books whatsoever. I wonder if this person is even interested in the issues of his/her profession. Other people have lots of books – old manuals, new books, and so on.
If you asked the next person you met about the impact data warehousing has had on their everyday life, confusion would be the most likely response. On the other hand, if you were to ask whether they're worried about the organisations they deal with or public authorities having access to lots of different information about their lifestyles, circumstances and movements, there would be no shortage of opinion. Some people take the view that such information will be used for nefarious purposes; others believe the opposite; and some will be neutral or find their views shifting.
David Lyle, VP Product Strategy, Informatica speaking at Teradata's Universe event in March 2009.
Full conference presentation accessible free of charge.
Full conference presentation accessible free of charge.
Quick Links
Login
Latest Video
How to implement access and change control for Group Policy?
Latest Event
TechConnect
March 16, 2010
This complimentary full-day event aims to help your clients ... click here
Portal Switch
Switch to the Convergence & Collaboration Portal.