As hard drives continue to replace file cabinets in most offices, the importance of data warehousing is greater than ever. No matter what industry your business operates within, it is imperative that your workforce understands all aspects of warehousing data from sourcing data warehousing vendors to developing a viable data warehousing system.

Data warehousing is a hot topic in today's business world and there is a wide selection of training options available. As you search for data warehousing education and training for you and your employees, keep the following in mind:

1. Data warehousing system training classes are available online.

2. Workshops are a great way to help you find the right data warehouse solution for your business.

3. Webinars are a convenient and cost-effective way to get training from data warehouse vendors and industry organizations.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Register for data warehouse solutions classes online

Online classes are a great way for you and your team to get a crash course in data warehousing. Online class schedules are usually flexible and offer a host of resources that are available to you 24 hours per day. Taking classes online will allow your office to keep work flowing smoothly as you develop or revamp your data warehousing system.

I recommend: RemoteCourse.com offers an online data warehousing training series that covers all aspects of creating a data warehousing solution. Or, sign up for E-Learning.com's three short-length data warehousing classes.

Attend workshops and seminars to get hands-on warehousing data training

Workshops, seminars and intensive short-length courses are a great way to immerse the entire office in data warehousing training. Attending a workshop will allow you to get intensive face-to-face training with top industry experts.

I recommend: Learn the ins and outs of a data warehouse life cycle with the 4-day course from Kimball Group. The group will even come to your office to conduct the course. Attend IBM's half-day technical seminar to learn how to make better use of your mainframe in data warehousing.

Use webinars to update your team's data warehousing services training

If you're in the need of some supplemental data warehousing training, webinars are the way to go. Webinars are available in both live and recorded versions are usually available for multiple views. Data warehousing webinars are also incredibly convenient and many are available free of cost.

I recommend: Sign up for one of The Data Warehousing Institute's webinars on data warehousing, such as "Fast Track your Data Warehouse" which covers everything you need to know about streamlining your data warehousing system. Attend MySQL's on-demand webinar, "High Performance Low Cost Data Warehousing with MySQL and Infobright" to learn how to get your data warehousing system off the ground.

Data warehousing is the comprehensive organization and storage of your company’s digital data, be it financial, customer information, or sales. With data storage services, you have access to this repository, which is available for analysis and reporting to further business growth. As a window into your enterprise, data warehousing becomes the basis for forecasting and strategic decision-making as well as the foundation of customer relationship management (CRM).

When shopping for data warehousing solutions, consider the following:

1. Data warehousing as the foundation of business intelligence.
2. Data warehousing solutions and platforms.
3. Data warehouse management services and consultants.
4. Data storage services.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Data warehousing as the foundation of business intelligence

Data that exists in fragmented, departmental silos cannot be mined and put to work, leaving management with an incomplete view of the company. Through data warehousing solutions, a single, consistent repository of enterprise data is created that is culled and analyzed to become the basis of an overall business intelligence strategy.

I recommend: Informatica Corporation offers a number of data warehousing solutions, including a webinar and online tools to assess your needs. To optimize data for warehousing and reporting, consider Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) tools from iWay Software. Data Mirror’s Integration Suite allows you to load data warehouses from multiple sources in real time enabling better business decisions. For a wealth of resources about data warehousing, visit The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), which offers certification, webinars, onsite education and links to vendors with data warehousing solutions.

Data warehousing solutions and platforms

Oracle, SAS, SAP BW, Microsoft, Sybase and MySQL are the big players in business intelligence and, therefore, data warehousing solutions. Written as large enterprise systems, their components are often modular and can be integrated into more specific systems as HP did with Oracle to create HP's Business Intelligence Data Warehousing platform.

I recommend: The HP Neoview Enterprise Data Warehouse is an Oracle-based business intelligence and data warehousing solution. MySQL is an open source database that runs on multiple platforms allowing developers to build database applications in the language of their choice.

Data warehouse management services and consultants

Most data warehouse management consultants are either with the consulting branch of a solution provider or offer solutions based on a combination of partner technologies.

I recommend: Knightsbridge Solutions, HP’s information management practice, offers a package of data warehouse management services including data warehousing. TUSC is a business intelligence consulting agency that specializes in Oracle data management software solutions. Kalido’s enterprise data management service assists clients in developing departmental data warehouses, enterprise data warehouses and networked data warehouse solutions.

Data storage services

While its implications in terms of accessibility and security should be carefully scrutinized, outsourcing your data warehousing to online or offshore data storage services has the advantages of greater capacity plus off-site backup for your data.

I recommend: Bleum Software Outsourcing uses Microsoft technologies for outsourcing data warehouse management in the banking and telecom industries. Amerivault’s data warehouse management services offer automatic backups and remote data recovery.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Approach data warehouse management as part of a larger business intelligence project.
• •  Include all customer-related data in your data warehousing efforts for better marketing and customer service.
• •  Look for data warehousing solutions that are properly scaled to your business size and industry, allowing for future growth.
• •  Data management software is an ever-evolving part of business intelligence. Stay abreast of new developments via industry newsletters, conferences and webinars.

While large IT departments and companies have traditionally been the ones to take advantage of data warehousing, it's not out of the question for small and medium businesses. The high cost of the necessary software and hardware, coupled with the maintenance required, kept most small businesses out of the playing field.

If you're looking at the possibility of data warehousing options for your business for the first time, familiarize yourself with the data warehousing key terms first. If you're not IT savvy, you can get confused quickly. This guide addresses basic terms, such as data warehouse, data mart, queries, SOA, structured and unstructured data and meta data.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Data warehouse

Coined in 1990, the term data warehouse refers to a central collection (database) of data used as a repository and to support the business management decision-making process. The data collected is stable (you can add data to the data warehouse but can never remove it), subject oriented, integrated and identified with a particular time period.

I recommend: Refer to the article at LGI Systems Incorporated as you decide whether data warehousing is right for your company.

Data mart

A data mart is a repository of data (that may or may not come from a data warehouse) gathered from operational data and other sources that's designed to answer the specific demands of a single audience in terms of analysis, content, presentation and ease of use. A data mart is sometimes described as a scaled-down data warehouse for a single department or function.

I recommend: Expand your knowledge of data marts via the online Teradata Magazine article titled "Avoiding data mart traps."

Queries

Queries are concise memos with specific parameters for requesting information from a data warehouse. For example, you can write queries to retrieve quarterly sales values or comparisons of weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual sales values.

I recommend: Learn how to write your own queries from Penn Computing at the University of Pennsylvania Information Systems & Computing department.

SOA

SOA stands for service-oriented architecture. It's an enterprise-scale, conceptual IT architecture used to design applications and business processes where every computing unit of work equals one service. For example, a service can be determining inventory levels, ordering product or segmenting customers. SOA integrates your business as linked services and their outcomes.

I recommend: Put SOA into context by reading IBM's article titled "Service-oriented modeling and architecture. It paints a clear picture and references easy-to-understand diagrams and drawings.

Structured data vs. unstructured data

Structured data refers to data within fixed fields inside a record or file. The format of structured data remains the same; only the values change. Examples include spreadsheets, budgets, purchase orders, statistics, inventories and sales. In contrast, unstructured data comes in the form of free-form text such as emails or other word processing documents. Unstructured data also includes Bitmap objects such as image, video and audio files.

I recommend: Read the excerpt from "Tapping into unstructured data: Integrating unstructured data and structural analytics into business intelligence" for an easy-to-understand description of structured and unstructured data. For more information, check out the Bill Inmon's paper on the subject.

Meta data

Simply and concisely put, the term meta data means data about other data. With regard to a data warehouse, meta data describe the warehouse's contents, data location, correlation to other data, sources and its relation to the company.

I recommend: Use the online document "Meta data: The key to data warehouse design" (a systems engineering approach) to gain an in-depth understanding of meta data.