Best Practices in Data Warehousing
high as 98 percent. More than 7,000 Rural Development
employees nationwide can retrieve the information at
their desktops, using a standard Web browser. Because
employees are familiar with the browser, they did not
need training to use the new data mining system (Fer-
ris, 2003).
Use Information Visualization
Techniques Such as geographic
Information Systems (gIS)
A GIS combines layers of data about a physical location
to give users a better understanding of that location.
GIS allows users to view, understand, question, inter-
pret, and visualize data in ways simply not possible
in paragraphs of text or in the rows and columns of a
spreadsheet or table.
EPA Envirofacts Warehouse includes the capability
of displaying its output via the EnviroMapper GIS sys-
tem. It maps several types of environmental information,
including drinking water, toxic and air releases, haz-
ardous waste, water discharge permits, and Superfund
sites at the national, state, and county levels (Garvey,
2003). Individuals familiar with Mapquest and other
online mapping tools can easily navigate the system
and quickly get the information they need.
Leverage a Data Warehouse to Support
Disaster Recovery
A warehouse can serve as a centralized repository of
key data that can be backed up and secured to ensure
business continuity in the event of a disaster.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
tracks daily stock transactions for the entire country. To
manage this transactional data, the agency established
a disaster recovery architecture that is based on a data
warehouse. (Sybase Corporation, 2007)
Provide a Single Access Point to
Multiple Sources of Data as part of the
War Against Terrorism
A data warehouse can be used in the war against ter-
rorism by bring together a collection of diverse data
thereby allowing authorities to “connect the dots,” e.g.,
identify associations, trends and anomalies.
The FBI uses its Investigative Data Warehouse to
0
access more than 47 sources of counterterrorism data
including file information from the FBI and other agen-
cies as well as public sources. The FBI’s warehouse
includes a feature called “alert capability” which
automatically notifies users when a newly uploaded
document meets their search criteria. (Federal Bureau
of Investigation, 2007).
Involve the Users when Identifying
Warehousing Requirements
Users were asked for their requirements for the health-
care-based data warehousing by surveying business
users at the Health Care Financing Administration.
Specifically, sample queries were identified such as: Of
the total number of hip fractures in a given year, how
many patients had surgery? Of those who had surgery,
how many had infections?
By being more responsive to user needs, this led to
the successful launch of HCFA’s Teraplex Integration
Center. (Makulowich, 1999)
Use a Modular Architecture to Respond
to Changes
The data warehouse is a dynamic structure that changes
due to new requirements. A monolithic architecture
often mean changes throughout the data warehousing
structure. By using a modular architecture instead, one
can isolate where changes are needed.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the
Department of Energy uses a modular architecture for
its Enterprise Reporting Workbench Data Architecture
to maximize flexibility, control and self-sufficiency.
(The Data Warehouse Institute, 2007).
FUTURE TRENDS
Data warehousing will continue to grow as long as
there are disparate silos of data sources throughout an
organization. However, the irony is that there will be a
proliferation of data warehouses as well as data marts,
which will not interoperate within an organization.
Some experts predict the evolution toward a federated
architecture for the data warehousing environment.
For example, there will be a common staging area for