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2.1 Introduction
Data Warehouse is a technology, which abstracts and analyzes useful data
that helps companies make best business decisions. Data Warehouse is
becoming the core technology of Business Intelligence field. Requirements
are essential ingredients for developing the Data Warehouse systems.
Usually Project Managers or Leads focus much about requirements. This
chapter is designed for all IT professionals irrespective of their roles in Data
Warehousing projects. It will show you how best you can fit into your specific
role in a project. If you want to be part of a team that is passionate about
building a successful Data Warehouse, you need the details presented in
this unit.
Note: Developers have to gather requirements with the view of analysis in
mind.
Objectives:
After studying this unit, you should be able to:
describe the importance of Project Planning and Requirements
Gathering
discuss Data Warehouse development strategies and development Life
cycle approaches
highlight the importance of both generalized lifecycle and Kimball
lifecycle and its sequences
Then data from the overall, large enterprise-wide data warehouse flows
into departmental and subject data marts. On the other hand, the
bottom-up approach is to start by building individual data marts, one by
one. The integration of these data marts will make up the Enterprise
Data Warehouse. We looked at the pros and cons of the two methods.
We also discussed a practical approach of going bottom-up, but making
sure that the individual data marts are conformed to one another so that
they can be viewed as a whole. For this practical approach to be
successful, you have to first plan and define requirements at the overall
corporate level.
Build or Buy. This is a major issue for all organizations. No one builds a
Data Warehouse totally from scratch by in-house programming. There is
no need to reinvent the wheel every time. A wide and rich range of third-
party tools and solutions are available.
If you want to build the Data Warehouse using in-house development, a
lot of coding and maintenance is required. Particularly Meta Data
maintenance (DWH schema) becomes difficult. In addition to this, you
have to write in-house programs for data extraction, data transformation,
programs for loading the Data Warehouse storage.
Single Vendor or Best-of-Breed. Vendors come in a variety of
categories. There are multiple vendors and products catering to the
many functions of the Data Warehouse.
So what are the options? How should you decide?
Two major options are:
1) Use the products of a single vendor
2) Use products from more than one vendor, selecting appropriate tools
Planning your Data Warehouse using Single Vendor approach provides:
High level of integration among the tools
Constant look and feel
Seamless cooperation among components
Centrally managed information exchange
Overall price negotiable (non technical)
Define the
Gather Requirements
Project
Implementation
Project Planning
o Scope, definition and understanding the business requirements
o Task Identification
o Scheduling
o Resource Planning
o Workload Assignment
o The end document represents a blueprint of the project.
Program/Project Management
o Enforces the project plan
o Status monitoring
o Issue tracking
o Development of a comprehensive communication plan that
addresses both the business and IT units
Business Requirements Definition
o Success of the project depends on a solid understanding of the
business requirements.
o Understanding the key factors driving the business is crucial for
successful translation of the business requirements into design
considerations
What follows the business requirements definition?
3 concurrent tracks focusing on:
Technology (Technical Architecture)
Data (Dimensional Modeling, Physical Design and ETL)
Business Intelligence Applications.
Arrows in the diagram indicate the activity workflow along each of the
parallel tracks and dependencies between the tasks are illustrated by the
vertical alignment of the task boxes.
Deployment
It is crucial that adequate planning was performed to make sure that the
results of technology, data, and BI application tracks are tested and fit
together properly. Deployment should be deferred if all the pieces, such
as training, documentation, and validated data, are not ready for
production release.
Maintenance
This occurs when the system is in production. It includes technical
operational tasks that are necessary to keep the system performing
optimally. Some of the technical tasks are listed below:
Usage Monitoring
Performance Tuning
Index Maintenance
System Backup
Ongoing support, education, and communication with business users
2.4.3 Requirement Gathering Approaches
There are two widely used methods for deriving business requirements:
Source Driven Requirements Gathering
User Driven Requirements Gathering
Source Driven Requirements Gathering
This process is based on defining the requirements by using the
source data in production transactional systems. Analyzing the E-R
model of source data does this or the actual physical record layout
and selecting data elements deemed to be of interest.
User Driven Requirements Gathering
This process is based on defining the requirements by conducting
interviews and discussions with users about business needs and
also investing the functions they perform.
It is recommended to follow the user-driven approach to
breakdown the project into manageable pieces. Here, each
piece is a subject area. The requirements are gathered for each
subject area.
Note: In the above paragraph, the details about the subject area will
be given in subsequent chapters.
Self Assessment Questions
6. In most organizations, two groups of people are key to the success of
the project, ______________________ and _________________.
7. In Data Warehouse, the requirements are gathered subject area wise.
(True / False)
2.5 Summary
Requirements Gathering is a different strategy for Data Warehouse
development.
An OLTP system collects data for transaction recording purposes.
Where as for a Data Warehouse, data is collected for analysis purpose.
Analysis can be sales analysis or mortality analysis or trend analysis,
etc.
OLTP systems support predefined reports; where as Data Warehouse
supports ad-hoc reports.
There are two widely used methods for deriving business requirements,
Source-driven requirements gathering and User-driven requirements
gathering
Data Warehouse can be implemented using either top-down or bottom-
up development methodologies. This decision always depends upon the
business requirements.
Like Conventional (OLTP projects) projects, Data Warehouses also
follow SDLC life cycle approach.
Like conventional projects there are certain roles and responsibilities for
Data Warehouse development. Roles can be Executive Sponsor,
Business Analyst, Testing, and Infrastructure Specialist Coordinator etc.
2.7 Answers
Self Assessment Questions
1. Analysis
2. Historical
3. Senior Management and Working Management