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POData Warehouse Considerations: When and Why?
 

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  1. POData Warehouse Considerations: When and Why?
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    <p>A little background here:</p> <p>I know <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_warehouse" rel="noreferrer">what a data warehouse is</a>, more or less. I've read several dozen guides on data warehousing, I've played with SSAS, I know what a star schema and a dimension table and a fact table is, I know what ETL is and how to do it. <strong>This is not a "how" question or a request for tutorials.</strong></p> <p>My issue is that all of the material I've read on data warehousing seems to gloss over the <em>rationale</em> for building a data warehouse. They all figuratively, or in some cases literally start with the phrase "<em>so you've decided to build a data warehouse...</em>" Except I haven't made that decision yet.</p> <p>So I'm hoping that SO members can point me to, or help come up with, some kind of semi-objective test. Something that I can adapt to a particular system and end up with either "yep, we need a data warehouse" or "no, the payoff today would be too small." I think that the specific questions I should be able to answer are:</p> <ol> <li><p>At what point is building a data warehouse an option worth considering? In other words, what telltale signs, metrics, or other criteria should I be looking out for that might indicate that a standard transactional environment is no longer sufficient?</p></li> <li><p>What are the alternatives to a full-on data warehouse? Denormalization in the transactional database and the bog-standard replicated "report server" are two that come to mind; are there any others I should explore before committing to the DW?</p></li> <li><p>Why is a data warehouse better than said alternatives? If the answer is, "it depends", then what does it depend on?</p></li> <li><p>When <strong>shouldn't</strong> I attempt to build a data warehouse? I'm skeptical of anything declared as a "best practice" irrespective of context. Surely there must be some scenarios where a DW is the <em>wrong</em> choice - what are they?</p></li> <li><p>Are there any <strong>practical</strong> examples I could look at of systems that were improved by introducing a data warehouse? Something that would explain to me, end-to-end, what sorts of decisions or analysis they needed the warehouse for, how they decided what to put in it, and how the warehouse ended up fitting into the larger environment? I don't want a contrived "let's make a cube out of the AdventureWorks database" - the implementation is irrelevant to me, I'm interested in the <em>specifications and designs</em> and overall <em>thought process</em> that were involved.</p></li> </ol> <p>I generally try not to ask multi-parters but I think that these are all very closely-related. I'm willing to accept any answer that addresses at least the first 4 questions, although the last would really help to crystallize this in my mind. Links are fine if somebody's already written about this, as long as they're reasonably concise and specific (link to Ralph Kimball's home page = not helpful).</p> <p>Hope I've made the question clear - thanks in advance for your answers!</p>
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