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

Managing the ETL Environment

A DW/BI environment can have a great dimensional model, well-deployed BI applications, and strong management sponsorship. But it cannot be a success until it can be relied upon as a dependable source for business decision making. One of the goals for the DW/BI system is to build a reputation for providing timely, consistent, and reliable data to empower the business. To achieve this goal, the ETL system must constantly work toward fulfilling three criteria:

  • Reliability. The ETL processes must consistently run. They must run to completion to provide data on a timely basis that is trustworthy at any level of detail.
  • Availability. The data warehouse must meet its service level agreements (SLAs). The warehouse should be up and available as promised.
  • Manageability. A successful data warehouse is never done. It constantly grows and changes along with the business. The ETL processes need to gracefully evolve as well.

The ETL management subsystems are the key components...