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July 23, 2001

Back to Basics

Data warehouse consultants need to bone up on the soft side (and hard facts) of business

By Michael Venerable

Continued from Page 1

BE AN EXPERT IN YOUR OWN FIELD

When I worked on my first data warehouse project in the late '80s, there was only one book that I could find on the topic. Conferences and seminars were nonexistent. In preparing this column, I looked at that book again to see how it read in hindsight. Not surprisingly, many of the techniques and ideas seemed dated. We have made remarkable progress in the last 10 or so years as practitioners. The original idea remains novel, but the practices and technologies in place today were unanticipated back then.

To pay proper tribute to the idea and the pioneers (such as this column's editor), I ask that you become an expert in your field. If you are a regular reader of this column and others like it, then you are on your way. Reading a sampling of nonproduct-specific books each year is mandatory. And by reading, I mean reading to understand, internalize, and criticize. Attend conferences and seminars, keep up with vendor developments, and work around the edges of your current comfort zone. Understand emerging technologies such as multidimensional expressions, storage area networks, and XML and their importance to data warehousing. If you are really bold, add to that body of work by writing an article or a book. The act of organizing and documenting your thoughts into a published work will add to your expertise immeasurably.

Another excellent way to hone your knowledge and test it at the same time is to teach or train others. It is especially valuable to teach core concepts in such a nascent field. Inevitably, you will encounter a question from a student that challenges you in an unexpected way. Find opportunities to teach others, and you will emerge better prepared for your next assignment.

RULES FOR VENDORS

For vendors that thought they would be able to skip the first part of the column, I have some bad news. My recommended practices for vendors are exactly the same. In addition to working as a consultant, I have spent the last four years working with or for vendors in the business intelligence market. In that time I have noticed that vendors that listened carefully to practitioners and customers have weathered difficult times and navigated changes in the marketplace quite well. I have also noticed vendors that follow business needs and market changes most closely are those that gain market share quickly.

Finally, it is imperative that vendors employ or consult expert practitioners in the data warehouse or business intelligence space. The differences between solutions in our space and those in the mainstream transaction market are growing. Simply showing up with a data warehouse version of some core technology or development tool will not satisfy the increasingly specialized needs of the data warehouse world.

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With these principles in mind, I would expect any practitioner or vendor to survive in this new old economy just fine. It's time for "B2B."

Guest columnist Michael Venerable [mvenerable@oaktonsoftware.com] cowrote Data Warehouse Design Solutions (John Wiley & Sons, 1998) and is an expert in applying dimensional modeling techniques to real-world business problems. He is an executive with Required Technologies, a New York-based research company.