Database Management

Smart data warehouse implementation begins with the proper planning. In this article, I will give you a guide on how to go about effectively integrating data warehouse implementation into your business or organization.

First, let's discuss what your chief goal with data warehouse implementation should be. What you wish to accomplish is to make all the data that is critically important to your business available in a simple and easily accessible database. To achieve this first means to be able to import all of your data from existing applications into a standard database system.

Depending upon the size of your company, this could take anywhere from a few days all the way up to six months.

Data warehouses exist mostly in the form of write once, read many times storage. What this means is that you are left with data that is close to what is called "near operational", which can be used as a replacement for much of the existing reporting that is currently going on.

In some cases, people implement data warehouses simply for storing historical data, such as financial and trend analysis, which they can retrieve in the future.

It is important to make this distinction early on, before you begin with a fully integrated data warehouse implementation.

Implementation starts with designing the warehouse. What you want to aim for is a data warehouse that is clean, standardized, and easily able to receive and normalize data from a variety of different applications, and can do so frequently.

Additionally, to the new user, certain data warehouse functions may be puzzling. In fact, many people view a data warehouse as something that is static, when in fact it is very organic in nature. Each data warehouse implementation that is made to a company will be unique for that company, so do not expect a simple paint by the numbers experience after data warehouse implementation has been complete.

It is important that any code that you write for your data warehouse has the ability to be modified, and modified quickly. In fact, many times you won't be sure of exactly what is needed, until you try a few things out. If you don't have a flexible code that can easily be changed, then you might run into some problems.

In conclusion, I've given you some straightforward advice on proper data warehouse implementation. While it is not the most complex task in the world, it is not the easiest either. Make sure you have a full grasp of this undertaking before proceeding with it.

Database Management |