"Peter Nolan" <peter@peternolan.com> wrote in message
news:1122885468.591195.136090@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Luis,
> interesting question......I assume your 'relational database' is for a
> transaction based system?
>
> So, you will not want to much to convert the database as to create a
> second database as the DW as it is not advisable to try to run a
> transaction system on a DW model.
>
> On my home web site there are lots of papers and presentations
> discussing what a DW is and the various modelling techniques that are
> commonly employed. The modeling technique you might use depends on what
> you want the DW for....if you need to answer any question you ever
> might want to ever ask from any data you ever had without havining any
> idea about waht questions might be asked you need an archival data
> store of some type.....
>
> If you have a reasonable idea of what questions the DW needs to answer
> and do not need to store every value of every change in every field
> forever you can live without the archival data store and use all
> dimensional models.
>
> There are a lot of books/materials available about dimensional models
> now....I have pointers to the ones I recommend on my beginners page.
>
> If you finish up going with building a DW database you will need to
> answer some of the FAQs I have on my FAQ page....what database? what
> ETL tool, what query tool etc. So I suggest you browse thru the FAQ
> page as well....
>
> Since you are asking here, MSFT offer SQL Server, Analysis Server, DTS
> and Report Services as their main BI offerings. Of course MS Office can
> also be used to present data from the DW. These all work pretty well in
> their space......well enough that I am actually building a BI product
> on top of it all as I think MSFTs BI for the masses message is going to
> stimulate demand for the product we are building (we hope!).
>
> There are well documented/defined techniques for transforming
> transaction based data to dimensional data. (I've published free code
> to do so on my site.)
>
> What is not well documented/published are all the ideas of how to
> integrate data from many different places and combine them
> effectively...butit sounds like you are not doing that yet....
>
> Ralph Kimballs last book on ETL toolkit is also worth reading...I have
> just finished it but have not put the pointer to it on my web site
> yet....
>
> Anyway, happy reading....I hope the materials I have published are
> helpful.....if you feel there are things missing please let me know. I
> am building my site as a place where 'newbies' can go and find lots of
> useful information as well as useful links.....my little effort at
> putting something back into DWing.. :-)
>
> Best Regards
>
> Peter Nolan
> www.peternolan.com
>
>

"Peter Nolan" <peter@peternolan.com> wrote in message
news:1123236226.565030.95250@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi Akinja,
> I have now bundled my old 'newsletters' on my downloads page.......it
> is just a zip file that says newsletters before 2004 or something...
>
> Newsletter number 1 is 'Cost Benefit Anlaysis and Business Benefits
> Realisation'.......cost benefit analysis used to be the number 1
> question in the early 90s......when DWing was considered something of a
> mystical art form and there were very few public examples of
> success........
>
> That paper lists a whole lot of successes...some of which I was
> involved in, some of which I was not...
>
> The benefit of BI?
>
> Any senior managers that cannot see the benefit of BI today are not
> worth the title 'senior manager'. I have not bothered to sell the
> 'Benefits of BI' for about 6 years now. I simply do not bother with any
> account that is not totally committed to building the EDW. There's no
> point. If the senior managers have not figured this out yet there are
> way too many battles to fight to move the project forward and it will
> probably fail anyway.....so why bother?
>
> Unfortunately IT people have made something of a hash of BI and DW/BI
> has 'got a bad name'. Not because there is no return, but because the
> people building them have not had the slightest idea of how to get a
> return.....every IT person (and his dog) wants to have BI on their
> resume and they feel that if they read a book or two and build
> something that passes for a DW they can then go out and sell themselves
> as BI consultants.......this has been unfortunate as it has added to
> the failure rate of projects.
>
> You do not get any return just by building a DW. You only get a return
> when you use it to drive the business forward. Most notably, you get
> great returns when you make the DW the basis for all large decisions
> made by the company.
>
> Every survery in IT says that 'Understanding of the business and
> communicating the business needs to IT' is the number one problem...and
> it is more so in BI.
>
> The fastest payback for a project I have done? We got our money back
> for the entire project even before we finished the project. The project
> went on to be the foundation of a 10x per annum return on investment.
> The company was called 'the jewel in the corporate crown' and the
> Managing Director of the company was promoted to CEO of the entire
> group of companies....it does not get any more successful than that.
>
> No other IT type projects have this capability. Few business projects
> can return 10x on investment and few can return all the cash for the
> project before the project goes live.....the second fastest I have
> heard of is 2 weeks......which is also excellent....
>
> Done properly the first iteration of a BI project should return the
> full cost of the project in 3-6 months....I would consider 6 months
> very slow......but sometimes the project is large and it takes a while
> to get that money back.
>
> As I said...just building the DW does not make the money...exploiting
> it does....and I see very little understanding of this around the
> world....I started a 'Business' focused DW discussion group and it has
> gone no-where in 2 years....
>
> So, by all means browse through that first newsletter, and the others.
> But if your senior managers do not already know BI is one of THE palces
> where HUGE value can be achieved I wouldn't bother trying to persuade
> them if I were you....
>
> Best Regards
>
> Peter Nolan
> www.peternolan.com
>