Book Image

The Data Warehouse Toolkit - Third Edition

By : Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross
Book Image

The Data Warehouse Toolkit - Third Edition

By: Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross

Overview of this book

The volume of data continues to grow as warehouses are populated with increasingly atomic data and updated with greater frequency. Dimensional modeling has become the most widely accepted approach for presenting information in data warehouse and business intelligence (DW/BI) systems. The goal of this book is to provide a one-stop shop for dimensional modeling techniques. The book is authored by Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross, known worldwide as educators, consultants, and influential thought leaders in data warehousing and business intelligence. The book begins with a primer on data warehousing, business intelligence, and dimensional modeling, and you’ll explore more than 75-dimensional modeling techniques and patterns. Then you’ll understand dimension tables in-depth to get a good grip on retailing and moved towards the topics of inventory. Moving ahead, you’ll learn how to use this book for procurement, order management, accounting, customer relationship management, and many more business sectors. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to gather all the essential knowledge, practices, and patterns for designing dimensional models.
Table of Contents (31 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
2
Title Page
3
Copyright
4
About the Authors
5
Credits
6
Acknowledgements
29
Index
30
Advertisement
31
End User License Agreement

Lifecycle Technology Track

On the Kimball Lifecycle roadmap in Figure 17-1, the business requirements definition is followed immediately by three concurrent tracks focused on technology, data, and BI applications, respectively. In the next several sections we’ll zero in on the technology track.

Technical Architecture Design

Much like a blueprint for a new home, the technical architecture is the blueprint for the DW/BI environment’s technical services and infrastructure. As the enterprise data warehouse bus architecture introduced in Chapter 4 supports data integration, the architecture plan is an organizing framework to support the integration of technologies and applications.

Like housing blueprints, the technical architecture consists of a series of models that unveil greater detail regarding each major component. In both situations, the architecture enables you to catch problems on paper (such as having the dishwasher too far from the sink) and minimize mid-project surprises...