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Seminar
Muhammad Tariq

In the Beginning, life was

simple…

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But …

Our Information Needs…

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Kept growing. (The Spider web)

A decision support database that is

maintained separately from the organization’s
operational databases.

A data warehouse is a

subject-oriented,

integrated,

time-varying,

non-volatile
collection of data that is used primarily in
organizational decision making

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“A collection of integrated, subjectoriented

databases designed to supply the
information required for decisionmaking.”
-- W. Inmon (1992)

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Data Warehouse is designed around

“subjects” rather than processes

A company may have

Retail Sales System

Outlet Sales System

Catalog Sales System

DW will have a Sales Subject Area

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Heterogeneous Source Systems

Little or no control

Need to Integrate source data

For Example: Product codes could be different
in different systems

Arrive at common code in DW

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Most business analysis

has a time component

Trend Analysis (historical
data is required)

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Used For …

Making consolidated reports

Finding relationships and correlations

Data mining

Examples

Banks identifying credit risks

Insurance companies searching for fraud

Medical research

How Do Data Warehouses Differ

From Operational Systems?

Goals

Structure

Size

Performance optimization

Technologies used

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Operational v/s Information

System
Features Operational Information
Characteristics Operational processing Informational processing
Orientation Transaction Analysis
User Clerk,DBA,database Knowledge workers
professional
Function Day to day operation Decision support
Data Current Historical
View Detailed,flat relational Summarized,
multidimensional
DB design Application oriented Subject oriented
Unit of work Short ,simple transaction Complex query
Access Read/write Mostly read

Operational v/s Information

System
Features Operational Information
Focus Data in Information out
Number of records tens millions
accessed

Number of users thousands hundreds

DB size 100MB to GB 100 GB to TB
Priority High performance,high High flexibility,end-
availability user autonomy
Metric Transaction throughput Query througput

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A logical design technique that seeks to

eliminate data redundancy

Illuminates the microscopic relationships
among data elements

Perfect for OLTP systems

Responsible for success of transaction
processing in Relational Databases

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ER models are NOT suitable for DW?

End user cannot understand or remember
an ER Model

Many DWs have failed because of overly
complex ER designs

Not optimized for complex, ad-hoc queries

Data retrieval becomes difficult due to
normalization

Browsing becomes difficult

Facts are stored in FACT Tables

Dimensions are stored in DIMENSION
tables

Dimension tables contains textual
descriptors of business

Fact and dimension tables form a Star
Schema

“BIG” fact table in center surrounded by
“SMALL” dimension tables

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Measures or facts

Facts are “numeric” & “additive”

For example; Sale Amount, Sale Units

Factors or dimensions

Star Schemas

Snowflake & Starflake Schemas

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Data Extraction

Data Cleaning

Data Transformation

Convert from legacy/host format to warehouse
format

Load

Sort, summarize, consolidate, compute views,
check integrity, build indexes, partition

Consumes 70-80% of project time

Heterogeneous Source Systems

Little or no control over source systems

Source systems scattered

Different currencies, measurement units

Ensuring data quality

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Commercial tools:

Warehouse Builders (Oracle)

MS Data Transformation Services

DataStage

SAS ETL Server

Typical functions

Define source, query (run SQL), define
transformation, define target, verify
transformation, schedule run, audit report

Tools

Query & reporting

OLAP

Data mining, visualization, segmentation,
clustering

New developments: text mining, web mining &
personalization

Mining multimedia data

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Commercial tools

Crystal Report, Impromptu, WebFocus

Increasingly common mode of delivery:

Web-enabled

Useful URLs

Ralph Kimball’s home page

http://www.rkimball.com

Larry Greenfield’s Data Warehouse Information
Center

http://pwp.starnetinc.com/larryg/

Data Warehousing Institute

http://www.dw-institute.com/

OLAP Council

http://www.olapcouncil.com/

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Thank you

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