Agile Data Warehouse Design

Agile Data Warehouse Design is a step-by-step guide for capturing data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) requirements and turning them into high performance dimensional models in the most direct way: by modelstorming (data modeling + brainstorming) with BI stakeholders. This book describes BEAM✲, an agile approach to dimensional modeling, for improving communication between data warehouse designers, BI stakeholders and the whole DW/BI development team. BEAM✲ provides tools and techniques that will encourage DW/BI designers and developers to move away from their keyboards and entity relationship based tools and model interactively with their colleagues. The result is everyone thinks dimensionally from the outset! Developers understand how to efficiently implement dimensional modeling solutions. Business stakeholders feel ownership of the data warehouse they have created, and can already imagine how they will use it to answer their business questions. Within this book, you will learn: ✲ Agile dimensional modeling using Business Event Analysis & Modeling (BEAM✲) ✲ Modelstorming: data modeling that is quicker, more inclusive, more productive, and frankly more fun! ✲ Telling dimensional data stories using the 7Ws (who, what, when, where, how many, why and how) ✲ Modeling by example not abstraction; using data story themes, not crow's feet, to describe detail ✲ Storyboarding the data warehouse to discover conformed dimensions and plan iterative development ✲ Visual modeling: sketching timelines, charts and grids to model complex process measurement - simply ✲ Agile design documentation: enhancing star schemas with BEAM✲ dimensional shorthand notation ✲ Solving difficult DW/BI performance and usability problems with proven dimensional design patterns Lawrence Corr is a data warehouse designer and educator. As Principal of DecisionOne Consulting, he helps clients to review and simplify their data warehouse designs, and advises vendors on visual data modeling techniques. He regularly teaches agile dimensional modeling courses worldwide and has taught dimensional DW/BI skills to thousands of students. Jim Stagnitto is a data warehouse and master data management architect specializing in the healthcare, financial services, and information service industries. He is the founder of the data warehousing and data mining consulting firm Llumino.

Building upon his earlier book that detailed agile data warehousing programming techniques for the Scrum master, Ralph's latest work illustrates the agile interpretations of the remaining software engineering disciplines: Requirements management benefits from streamlined templates that not only define projects quickly, but ensure nothing essential is overlooked. Data engineering receives two new "hyper modeling" techniques, yielding data warehouses that can be easily adapted when requirements change without having to invest in ruinously expensive data-conversion programs. Quality assurance advances with not only a stereoscopic top-down and bottom-up planning method, but also the incorporation of the latest in automated test engines. Use this step-by-step guide to deepen your own application development skills through self-study, show your teammates the world's fastest and most reliable techniques for creating business intelligence systems, or ensure that the IT department working for you is building your next decision support system the right way. Learn how to quickly define scope and architecture before programming starts Includes techniques of process and data engineering that enable iterative and incremental delivery Demonstrates how to plan and execute quality assurance plans and includes a guide to continuous integration and automated regression testing Presents program management strategies for coordinating multiple agile data mart projects so that over time an enterprise data warehouse emerges Use the provided 120-day road map to establish a robust, agile data warehousing program

Contains a six-stage plan for starting new warehouse projects and guiding programmers step-by-step until they become a world-class, Agile development team. It describes also how to avoid or contain the fierce opposition that radically new methods can encounter from the traditionally-minded IS departments found in many large companies.

This old edition was published in 2002. The current and final edition of this book is The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling, 3rd Edition which was published in 2013 under ISBN: 9781118530801. The authors begin with fundamental design recommendations and gradually progress step-by-step through increasingly complex scenarios. Clear-cut guidelines for designing dimensional models are illustrated using real-world data warehouse case studies drawn from a variety of business application areas and industries, including: Retail sales and e-commerce Inventory management Procurement Order management Customer relationship management (CRM) Human resources management Accounting Financial services Telecommunications and utilities Education Transportation Health care and insurance By the end of the book, you will have mastered the full range of powerful techniques for designing dimensional databases that are easy to understand and provide fast query response. You will also learn how to create an architected framework that integrates the distributed data warehouse using standardized dimensions and facts.

You have to make sense of enormous amounts of data, and while the notion of “agile data warehousing might sound tricky, it can yield as much as a 3-to-1 speed advantage while cutting project costs in half. Bring this highly effective technique to your organization with the wisdom of agile data warehousing expert Ralph Hughes. Agile Data Warehousing Project Management will give you a thorough introduction to the method as you would practice it in the project room to build a serious “data mart. Regardless of where you are today, this step-by-step implementation guide will prepare you to join or even lead a team in visualizing, building, and validating a single component to an enterprise data warehouse. Provides a thorough grounding on the mechanics of Scrum as well as practical advice on keeping your team on track Includes strategies for getting accurate and actionable requirements from a team’s business partner Revolutionary estimating techniques that make forecasting labor far more understandable and accurate Demonstrates a blends of Agile methods to simplify team management and synchronize inputs across IT specialties Enables you and your teams to start simple and progress steadily to world-class performance levels

Using Agile methods, you can bring far greater innovation, value, and quality to any data warehousing (DW), business intelligence (BI), or analytics project. However, conventional Agile methods must be carefully adapted to address the unique characteristics of DW/BI projects. In Agile Analytics, Agile pioneer Ken Collier shows how to do just that. Collier introduces platform-agnostic Agile solutions for integrating infrastructures consisting of diverse operational, legacy, and specialty systems that mix commercial and custom code. Using working examples, he shows how to manage analytics development teams with widely diverse skill sets and how to support enormous and fast-growing data volumes. Collier's techniques offer optimal value whether your projects involve "back-end" data management, "front-end" business analysis, or both. Part I focuses on Agile project management techniques and delivery team coordination, introducing core practices that shape the way your Agile DW/BI project community can collaborate toward success Part II presents technical methods for enabling continuous delivery of business value at production-quality levels, including evolving superior designs; test-driven DW development; version control; and project automation Collier brings together proven solutions you can apply right now--whether you're an IT decision-maker, data warehouse professional, database administrator, business intelligence specialist, or database developer. With his help, you can mitigate project risk, improve business alignment, achieve better results--and have fun along the way.

A cutting-edge response to Ralph Kimball's challenge to thedata warehouse community that answers some tough questions aboutthe effectiveness of the relational approach to datawarehousing Written by one of the best-known exponents of the Bill Inmonapproach to data warehousing Addresses head-on the tough issues raised by Kimball andexplains how to choose the best modeling technique for solvingcommon data warehouse design problems Weighs the pros and cons of relational vs. dimensional modelingtechniques Focuses on tough modeling problems, including creating andmaintaining keys and modeling calendars, hierarchies, transactions,and data quality

The Data Vault was invented by Dan Linstedt at the U.S. Department of Defense, and the standard has been successfully applied to data warehousing projects at organizations of different sizes, from small to large-size corporations. Due to its simplified design, which is adapted from nature, the Data Vault 2.0 standard helps prevent typical data warehousing failures. "Building a Scalable Data Warehouse" covers everything one needs to know to create a scalable data warehouse end to end, including a presentation of the Data Vault modeling technique, which provides the foundations to create a technical data warehouse layer. The book discusses how to build the data warehouse incrementally using the agile Data Vault 2.0 methodology. In addition, readers will learn how to create the input layer (the stage layer) and the presentation layer (data mart) of the Data Vault 2.0 architecture including implementation best practices. Drawing upon years of practical experience and using numerous examples and an easy to understand framework, Dan Linstedt and Michael Olschimke discuss: How to load each layer using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), including automation of the Data Vault loading processes. Important data warehouse technologies and practices. Data Quality Services (DQS) and Master Data Services (MDS) in the context of the Data Vault architecture. Provides a complete introduction to data warehousing, applications, and the business context so readers can get-up and running fast Explains theoretical concepts and provides hands-on instruction on how to build and implement a data warehouse Demystifies data vault modeling with beginning, intermediate, and advanced techniques Discusses the advantages of the data vault approach over other techniques, also including the latest updates to Data Vault 2.0 and multiple improvements to Data Vault 1.0