Data Warehousing – Table of Content

Architecture and Implementation

First edition; 288 pages
ISBN 0-13-080902-0
( by: Mark Humphries, Michael Hawkins and Michelle C. Dy )

Table of Content

I. INTRODUCTION.

1. The Enterprise IT Architecture.

The Past: Evolution of Enterprise Architectures. The Present: The IT Professional’s Responsibility. Business Perspective. Technology Perspective. Architecture Migration Scenarios. Migration Strategy: How Do We Move Forward?

2. Data Warehouse Concepts.

Gradual Changes in Computing Focus. The Data Warehouse Defined. The Dynamic, Ad Hoc Report. The Purposes of a Data Warehouse. A Word about Data Marts. A Word about Operational Data Stores. Data Warehouse Cost-Benefit Analysis / Return On Investment.

II. PEOPLE.

3. The Project Sponsor.

How Will a Data Warehouse Affect our Decision-Making Processes? How Does a Data Warehouse Improve My Financial Processes? Marketing? Operations? When Is a Data Warehouse Project Justified? What Expenses Are Involved? What Are the Risks? Risk-Mitigating Approaches. Is My Organization Ready for a Data Warehouse? How Do I Measure the Results?

4. The CIO.

How Do I Support the Data Warehouse? How Will My Data Warehouse Evolve? Who Should Be Involved in a Data Warehouse Project? What Is the Team Structure Like? What New Skills Will My People Need? How Does Data Warehousing Fit into My IT Architecture? How Many Vendors Do I Need to Talk To? What Should I Look for in a Data Warehouse Vendor? How Does Data Warehousing Affect My Existing Systems? Data Warehousing and its Impact on Other Enterprise Initiatives. When Is a Data Warehouse Not Appropriate? How Do I Manage or Control a Data Warehouse Initiative?

5. The Project Manager.

How Do I Roll Out a Data Warehouse Initiative? How Important Is the Hardware Platform? What Technologies Are Involved? Do I Still Use Relational Databases for Data Warehousing? How Long Does a Data Warehousing Project Last? How Is a Data Warehouse Different from Other IT Projects? What Are the Critical Success Factors of a Data Warehousing Project?

III. PROCESS.

6. Warehousing Strategy.

Strategy Components. Determine Organizational Context. Conduct Preliminary Survey of Requirements. Conduct Preliminary Source System Audit. Identify External Data Sources (If Applicable). Define Warehouse Rollouts (Phased Implementation). Define Preliminary Data Warehouse Architecture. Evaluate Development and Production Environments and Tools.

7. Warehouse Management and Support Processes.

Define Issue Tracking and Resolution Process. Perform Capacity Planning. Define Warehouse Purging Rules. Define Security Measures. Define Backup and Recovery Strategy. Set Up Collection of Warehouse Usage Statistics.

8. Data Warehouse Planning.

Assemble and Orient Team. Conduct Decisional Requirements Analysis. Conduct Decisional Source System Audit. Design Logical and Physical Warehouse Schema. Produce Source-to-Target Field Mapping. Select Development and Production Environment and Tools. Create Prototype for This Rollout. Create Implementation Plan for this Rollout. Warehouse Planning Tips and Caveats.

9. Data Warehouse Implementation.

Acquire and Set Up Development Environment. Obtain Copies of Operational Tables. Finalize Physical Warehouse Schema Design. Build or Configure Extraction and Transformation Subsystems. Build or Configure Data Quality Subsystem. Build Warehouse Load Subsystem. Set-up Data Warehouse Schema. Set Up Data Warehouse Metadata. Set Up Data Access and Retrieval Tools. Perform the Production Warehouse Load. Conduct User Training. Conduct User Testing and Acceptance.

IV. TECHNOLOGY.

10. Hardware and Operating Systems.
Parallel Hardware Technology. Hardware Selection Criteria.

11. Warehousing Software.

Overview. Middleware and Connectivity Tools. Extraction Tools. Transformation Tools. Data Quality Tools. Data Loaders. Database Management Systems. Metadata Repository. Data Access and Retrieval Tools. Data Modeling Tools. Warehouse Management Tools. Source Systems.

12. Warehouse Schema Design.

OLTP Systems Use Normalized Data Structures. Dimensional Modeling for Decisional Systems. Two Types of Tables: Facts and Dimensions. A Schema Is a Fact Table and Its Related Dimension Tables. Facts Are Fully Normalized, Dimensions Are Denormalized. Dimensional Hierarchies and Hierarchical Drilling. The Time Dimension. The Grain of the Fact Table. The Fact Table Key Is the Concatenation of Dimension Keys. Aggregates or Summaries. Dimensional Attributes. Multiple Star Schemas. Core and Custom Tables.

13. Warehouse Metadata.

Metadata Are a Form of Abstraction. Why Are Metadata Important? Metadata Types. Versioning. Metadata as the Basis for Automating Warehousing Tasks.

14. Warehousing Applications.

The Early Adoptors. Types of Warehousing Applications. Specialized Applications of Warehousing Technology.

V. WHERE TO NOW?

15. Warehouse Maintenance and Evolution.

Regular Warehouse Loads. Warehouse Statistics Collection. Warehouse User Profiles. Security and Access Profiles. Data Quality. Data Growth. Updates to Warehouse Subsystems. Database Optimization and Tuning. Data Warehouse Staffing. Warehouse Staff and User Training. Subsequent Warehouse Rollouts. Chargeback Schemes. Disaster Recovery.

16. Warehousing Trends.

Continued Growth of the Data Warehouse Industry. Increased Adoption of Warehousing Technology by More Industries. Increased Maturity of Data Mining Technologies. Emergence and Use of Metadata Interchange Standards. Increased Availability of Web-Enabled Solutions. Popularity of Windows NT for Data Mart Projects. Availability of Warehousing Modules for Application Packages. More Mergers and Acquisitions Among Warehouse Players.

VI. Appendices.

Appendix A. R/olapXL? User,s Guide.
Appendix B. Warehouse Designer? User’s Manual.
Appendix C. Online Data Warehousing Resources.
Appendix D. Tool and Vendor Inventory.
Appendix E. Software License Agreement.

VII. REFERENCES & FURTHER READING.

			IT Automation The Quest for “Lights Out”: Data center automation in distributed environments.
			CIO Wisdom Best Practices from Silicon Valley’s Leading IT Experts
			IT Services Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking, and Marketing: Delighting IT customers: your real-world, start-to-finish guide
			CIO Wisdom II More Best Practices from Leading IT Experts
			IT Architecture Toolkit Less theoretical, more practical approach to developing and implementing enterprise architecture.
			IT People Doing More with Less. Best practices for managing the people within the IT organization.
			Data Warehousing Architecture and Implementation: A start-to-finish process for deploying successful data warehouses
			Building Professional Services The Sirens’ Song: A comprehensive guide to creating a professional services organization
			IT Problem Management The complete “best practices” guide to IT problem resolution.
			IT Organization Building a World-Class Infrastructure.
			IT Web Services A Roadmap for the Enterprise: Architectures, platforms, roles, business models, and deployment realities.
			Software Development Building Reliable Systems.
			IT Production Services Building Competitive Advantage: Describes one of the most important functions of an IT infrastructure
			Managing IT as an Investment Partnering for Success: Maximizing the value of technology—and the success of your IT organization.
			High Availability Design, Techniques and Processes: The complete how-to guide for maximizing availability of enterprise systems
			IT Systems Management Design, Implement, and Manage World-Class Infrastructures.
			Technology Strategies Managing technology, value, and change in the new economy.
			Web-Based Infrastructures A 4-D Framework: Maximize the value of your next Web-centered initiative.