Data Warehousing

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Description:

With costs of data storage decreasing dramatically, storing information forever has become a reality. Companies and governments are now able to store as much information as they want for an unspecified time and data mine or retrieve this information at any given moment. For instance, Google will store all your search queries and offers an email service which has ben designed so that you never have to delete anything, and even if you delete it, it will still be stored on their servers.

Enablers:

• decreasing costs data storage
• replacement of traditional processes with digital applications
• Mass digitalization
• Disclosure for tax purposes
• Cost of Computer Resources
• Network Bandwidth
• Electronic banking

Inhibitors:

• Privacy laws
• Public resistance
• Processing power

Paradigms:

• not enough information versus too much information
• increasing ability to store all data versus increasing resistance from consumers to store all data
• technical capacity to store all the data versus technical capacity to analyze all the data

Experts:

Bill Inmon (William H. Inmon)

is the recognized "father of data warehousing" and the co-creator of the Corporate Information Factory, and the Government Information Factory, as well as DW 2.0, the next-generation data warehouse architecture. Mr. Inmon has over 35 years of experience in database technology management and data warehouse design, and has consulted with Fortune 1000 clients and leading IT executives on Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Database Management. He is known world-wide for his seminars on developing and managing data warehouses, and has been a keynote speaker for all of the major computing associations and vendors. In addition, Mr. Inmon is a key participant in many industry conferences, seminars, and tradeshows.[1]

Ralph Kimball, PhD

is a widely published author on the subject of data warehousing and business intelligence. He is known for long-term convictions that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. His methodology also known as dimensional modeling or the Kimball methodology is frequently used to allow sharing of conformed dimensions.[2]

Timing:

1970

the data-processing department was not able to handle huge backlogs of requests for data analyses. Applications data was hid behind mainframe files and databases, and it was periodically recorded in tapes for specific information manipulation.

1980

real computer applications were decentralized. DDBMS (distributed database management system) became a hit. But accessing data directly from the transactional databases did not work in real life, and “islands of data” were still a problem.

1990

data warehousing has become the most feasible solution to optimize and manipulate data. The current trend is to gather the data that is needed in an optimized database, regardless of the number of different applications and different platforms that are used to generate the source data

2000

The use of data warehouse technology has been widespread among Fortune 1000 companies for over 20 years However, the tools, expertise, and costs associated with a data warehouse have placed it well out of reach of most, if not all, small to mid-sized companies.

Web Resources:

• Wikipedia Date Warehouse page
• Data Warehousing Gotchas
• ODP - Data Warehouse Resources
• ODP - Data Warehouse Articles

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Inmon

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Kimball