Data Warehousing for the Busy DBA

Part 1: What is a data warehouse?

So, one of the enterprise architects has convinced management that we need a Data Warehouse.  You’re the DBA, you know about databases, right – we need you to go and design it.  Can we have an estimate by next Thursday for the board meeting?

This series of articles walks through key data warehouse concepts.  It is aimed at a database professional – a DBA or SQL developer – who is now getting involved in a data warehouse project.  Therefore the articles assume some background in database development or administration.

The term ‘data warehouse’ gets used quite loosely at times.  To start, here is a definition of what a data warehouse is (and is not) and the reasoning behind that definition.  We’ll also look at some alternatives to a data warehouse if your requirements aren’t congruent with an actual data warehouse project.  A data warehouse is more than just a reporting database.  A full-fledged data warehouse will have most or all of these requirements: more »