Data Warehousing from the Experts.

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If you glance to the side of this post you will see that one of the few books on my bookshelf is the Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit, and so I am annoyed that I can’t make the course of the book, presented by the authors, Joy Mundy and Warren Thornthwaite.

For those not familiar with these two eminent consultants, they work with Ralph Kimball at the Kimball Group.  For those not familiar with Ralph Kimball he is one of the most influential figures in Business Intelligence.  Many BI Vendors have adopted some or all of his concepts in their products and if look at his way of designing a warehouse using what he calls the bus architecture..

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(adapted from p171 of The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit)

and compare it to the dimension usage designer in the SQL Server BI Design Studio here

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and you can see the similarities i.e. dimensions on rows, facts on columns, and the white boxes represent where the facts (measure group) apply to a dimension.

So if you’re serious about data warehouse design and you are using or considering using the Microsoft product stack then this course could start to look interesting.  The course is at the London Heathrow Crowne Plaza on 20-23 October and you can register for it here.  It isn’t cheap, but like it says on the cosmetics adverts “You’re Worth it”. If your boss, accountant, partner doesn’t agree then you need to make them aware of the quality of the course the cachet of being taught by the best, and the networking opportunities.  If that doesn’t work then it might be a good a idea to look at some influencing skills training, or a career move to an outfit that offers quality training to its staff.

Technorati Tags: Kimball University,Dimensional Modelling,Business Intelligence,Data Warehouse,SQL Server

 

 

 

 

These courses are pretty rare in the UK, and I have always managed to be busy when they are being run

 

Ralph Kimball’s data warehouse lifecycle toolkit is also there, as I believe these 2 books are a very good start for anyone interested in business intelligence, partly because of the sound theories and approaches and partly because they have been written on the back of years of practical experience.