Organizational Impact of Data Warehousing
Data Warehouse Development Involves Several Iteratives Stages
Feb 14, 2009
The database administrator’s first consideration after building the initial iteration of development is the addition of new data. Here are the issues to be addressed:
- What is the business justification for the addition of new elements of data?
- Do the new elements of data conform to the data model that governs the structure of the data warehouse?
- If there is a relationship between the new data to be placed in the data warehouse and the data that already exists there, does the introduction of the new data conform to data already recognized in the data model?
- Does the new data participate in a key relationship?
- How much volume will the new data add to the data warehouse?
- How much time will it take to load the new data a) on an initial load basis and b) on an ongoing basis?
- Will existing data have to be reconfigured in any way?
Monitoring the Data Warehouse
The data warehouse collects historical customer data at a detailed level. The inevitable result of collecting detailed historical data is that the volumes of data grow at a rapid rate. To accomplish any form of rigorous and believable capacity planning in the data warehouse environment, growth must be measured regularly, beginning with the first input of data.
Measuring warehouse volume is just one aspect of monitoring. It’s equally important to monitor warehouse activity. This can be accomplished with a data warehouse activity monitor, software designed to capture ttransactions inside the data warehouse such as:
- Size of the queries
- What data the user base is looking at
- What queries are being submitted
- Which users are submitting queries
- What data is not being used by the user base
- Workload schedule -- daily, weekly, monthly
- Average daily workload
Data Warehouse Provides New Tools
Data warehousing affects management and organizations in a general way that enables the organization to meet the tenets of the modern business motto: work smarter, not harder. Data warehouse users will become more productive because they will have the tools to analyze the large volumes of data they store, instead of just collecting it.
Some organizations believe that implementing data warehousing technology simply consists of integrating all pertinent existing company data into one place. Managers need to be aware that data warehousing implies changes in the job functions of many people in an organization. For example, when an organization implements a data warehouse, data analysis and modeling become much more prevalent than just requirements analysis. They also become an important component of the corporate CRM strategy.
Database Administrator Role
The role of the database administrator involves more than the critical aspect of efficiently storing data. This individual takes on the central role in the development of the application. Furthermore, because it is a data model-oriented methodology, data warehouse design requires a development life cycle that does not follow the traditional development approaches. The development of a data warehouse essentially begins with a data model, from which the warehouse is built.
Data warehouses are high-maintenance systems that require their own support staff. It is important to remember that users will probably abandon a technically advanced and fast warehouse that adds little value from the start, reiterating the importance of storing only clean, useful data in the data warehouse. Armed with the information derived from the data warehouse activity monitor, a database administrator can do many things, such as watching end user queries become increasingly sophisticated -- progression from simple to sophisticated queries should be apparent in the mix of queries submitted over a period time.
As experience with the data warehouse grows, users will discover new and beneficial ways of using the technology, which will enhance benefits to customers as well as to the corporation.
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