This document discusses data warehousing, including the concept, characteristics, development approaches, and administration of data warehouses. It provides definitions of data warehousing and describes key aspects like the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) process used to integrate data from multiple sources into the data warehouse. The document also compares the top-down Inmon and bottom-up Kimball models for developing data warehouses and data marts. Effective administration, scalability, and security are identified as important considerations for managing large data warehouses.

1. Data Warehousing
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2. Agenda
• Concept of Data warehousing
• Data Integration and extraction
transformation and Load (ETL) Process
• Data Warehouse Development
• Administration
• Issues
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3. Concept of Data warehousing
• A data warehouse is a pool of data produced
to support decision making.
• Data is usually structured to be available in a
form ready for OLAP, mining, querying,
reporting and other decision support
applications
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4. Definition
“A data warehouse is simply a single, complete,
and consistent store of data obtained from a
variety of sources and made available to end
users in a way they can understand and use it in
a business context.”
-- Barry Devlin, IBM Consultant
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5. Characteristics of data warehouse
• Subject oriented
• Integrated
• Time variant or time series
• Nonvolatile
• Multidimensional
• Client/server
• Real time
• Include metadata
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6. 1. Subject-Oriented
Data is categorized and stored by business subject
rather than by application
Equity
Plans
Shares
Customer
financial
information
Savings
Insurance
Loans
OLTP Applications Data Warehouse Subject
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7. 2. Integrated
OLTP Applications
Savings
Current
accounts
Loans
Data Warehouse
Data on a given subject is defined and stored once.
Customer
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8. 3. Time-Variant
Data is stored as a series of snapshots, each
representing a period of time
Time Data
Jan-97 January
Feb-97 February
Mar-97 March
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9. 4. Nonvolatile
Typically data in the data warehouse is not updated or delelted.
Insert
Update
Delete
Read Read
Operational Warehouse
Load
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10. 5. Client/Server
• A data warehouses uses the client/server
architecture to provide easy access for end
users.
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11. 6. Real Time
• Data warehouses provide real time, or active
data access and analysis capabilities.
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12. 7. Meta Data
• Metadata is a data that describes other data
• It provides information about a certain item’s
content.
• E.g. information about how long the
document is, who is the author, when the
document was written and a short summary
of the document.
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13. • Structural Meta Data (data describing the
structure of data)
• Semantic Meta data (data describing the
meaning of a data)
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14. Data Marts
• A data mart is usually smaller and focuses on a
particular subject or department.
• It typically consist of a single subject area.
• Data Mart can be dependent or independent
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15. Data Warehouses Versus Data Marts
Property Data Warehouse Data Mart
Scope Enterprise Department
Subject Multiple Single-subject
Data Source Many Few
Size(typical) 100 GB to>1 TB <100 GB
Implementation time Months to years Months
Data
Warehouse
Data
Mart
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16. Data Mart
– Dependent data mart
A subset that is created directly from a data
warehouse
– Independent data mart
A small data warehouse designed for a strategic
business unit or a department
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17. Dependent Data Mart
Marketing
Sales
Finance
Human Resources
Marketing
Marketing
Marketing
External Data
Data
Warehouse
Operational
Systems
Flat Files
Data Marts
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18. Independent Data Mart
Operational
Systems
External Data
Sale or Marketing
Flat Files
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19. Operational Data stores
• Recent form of customer information file.
• Contents are updated throughout the course
of business operations.
• Used for short term decisions
• It stores only recent information
• Short term memory
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20. Enterprise Data warehouse
• Large scale data warehouse that is used across
the enterprise for decision support.
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21. Data Warehousing Process
• Data Sources (from legacy systems and external
data providers)
• Data extraction (using commercial software
called ETL)
• Data loading
• Comprehensive database
• Metadata
• Middleware tools (enable access to data
warehouse)
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22. Data Warehouse Architecture
• The data warehouse itself
• Data acquisition software
• Client software, which allows users to access
and analyze data from the warehouse.
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23. Data Integration and extraction
transformation and Load (ETL) Process
• A major purpose of a data warehouse is to
integrate data from multiple systems.
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24. Continued…
• Various integration technologies enable data and metadata
integration:
I. Enterprise application integration (provides a vehicle
(software) for pushing data from source systems into the
data warehouse)
II. Enterprise information integration (real time data
integration from a variety of sources, mechanism for pulling
data from source systems)
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25. Continued…
III. Extraction, transformation and Load: The ETL process is an
integral component in any data centric project.
• It consumes 70% of the time in a data centric project.
• The ETL process consists of extraction (reading data from one
or more databases), transformation (converting the extracted
data from its previous form into the form in which it needs to
be), and load ( putting the data into data warehouse)
• The purpose of the ETL process is to load the warehouse with
integrated and cleansed data.
• Data can come from any source like flat files, excel
spreadsheets etc.
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26. Continued…
• Any data quality issues pertaining to the source files need to
be corrected before the data are loaded into the data
warehouse.
• The process of loading data into a data warehouse can be
performed through data transformation tools or using
programming languages
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27. ETL Process
Packaged
application
Legacy
system
Other internal
applications
Transient
data source
Extract Transform Cleanse Load
Data
warehouse
Data mart
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28. Data Warehouse Development
Benefits:
• End users can perform extensive analysis in
numerous ways.
• A consolidated view of corporate data is
possible.
• Better and more timely information.
• Data access is simplified.
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29. Data warehouse development
approaches
• Inmon Model
• Kimball Model
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30. Inmon Model
• EDW approach
• Emphasis on top-down development
• Inmon’s approach starts with an enterprise
data warehouse, creating data marts as
subsets if appropriate.
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31. Kimball Model
• Data mart approach
• Emphasis on bottom-up development
• Kimball’s approach starts with data marts,
consolidating them into an EDW later if
appropriate.
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32. Best Model
• No one size fits all strategy to data
warehousing.
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33. DW Development Approaches
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34. Similarities and differences between the Inmon and
Kimball data warehouse development approaches
• Similarities: Both methods can produce an enterprise data
warehouse and subset data marts.
• Differences: Inmon’s approach starts with an enterprise data
warehouse, creating data marts as subsets of that EDW if
appropriate. The focus is on proven, traditional methods and
technologies. Kimball’s starts with data marts, consolidating
them into an EDW later if appropriate. It focuses in creating a
useful end-user capability quickly.
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35. Real Time Data Warehouse
• Real time data warehousing is the process of
loading and providing data via the data
warehouse as they become available.
• Also known as active data warehouse.
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36. Concerns about real-time BI
 Not all data should be updated continuously
 May be cost prohibitive
 May also be infeasible
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37. Example
• Egg plc (egg.com) is the world’s largest online
bank.
• It provides banking, insurance, investments
and mortgages to more than 3.6 million
customers through its internet site.
• In 1998, Egg selected Sum microsystems to
create a reliable, scalable, secure
infrastructure to support its more than 2.5
million daily transactions.
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38. Continued…
• In 2001, the system was upgraded.
• This new customer data warehouse used Sun,
Oracle and SAS software products.
• The system provides near real-time data access.
• It provides data warehouse and data mining
services to users.
• Hundreds of sales and marketing campaigns are
constructed using near real time data.
• Enables faster decision making about specific
customers.
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39. Data Warehouse Administration
• Due to its huge size, a DW requires especially strong
monitoring in order to sustain its efficiency,
productivity and security.
• The successful administration and management of a
data warehouse entails skills and proficiency.
• A data warehouse administrator should be familiar
with high performance software, hardware and
networking technologies.
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40. DW Scalability and Security
• Scalability
– The main issues pertaining to scalability:
• The amount of data in the warehouse
• How quickly the warehouse is expected to grow
• The number of concurrent users
• The complexity of user queries
– Good scalability means that queries and other data-
access functions will grow linearly with the size of the
warehouse
• Security
– Emphasis on security and privacy
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41. Security concerns involved in building a
data warehouse.
1.Laws and regulations, in the U.S. and elsewhere,
require certain safeguards on databases that contain
the type of information typically found in a DW.
2.The large amount of valuable corporate data in a data
warehouse can make it an attractive target.
3.The need to allow a wide variety of unplanned
queries in a DW makes it impractical to restrict end
user access to specific carefully constrained screens,
one way to limit potential violations.
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42. Effective security in a data warehouse should
focus on four main areas:
• Step 1. Establishing effective corporate and security
policies and procedures. An effective security policy should
start at the top and be communicated to everyone in the
organization.
• Step 2. Implementing logical security procedures and
techniques to restrict access. This includes user
authentication, access controls, and encryption.
• Step 3. Limiting physical access to the data center
environment.
• Step 4. Establishing an effective internal control review
process for security and privacy.
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43. DIRECTV THRIVES WITH ACTIVE DATA
WAREHOUSING
• DIRECTV which is known for its direct
television broadcast satellite service, has been
a regular contributor to the evolution of TV
with its advanced HD programming,
interactive features, digital video recording
services and electronic program guides.
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44. Problem
• DIRECTV faced the challenge of dealing with
high transactional data volumes created by
no. of daily customer calls.
• Accommodating such a large data volume,
along with changing market conditions was
one of key challenges.
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45. Solution
• Used software solutions of Teradata and
GoldenGate to develop a product that
integrates its data assets in near real time
throught the enterprise.
• The goal of the new data warehouse system
was to send fresh data to the call center at
least daily.
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46. Results
• Sales personnel were able to retain customers.
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