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Related Links
This page has a number of sections.
I have decided to put up more links than I originally planned. So this
page contains the links I think are most valuable and a set of other link pages
to link to other sites I think are worthwhile. I also added other
content/comments to these link pages without cluttering up this page.
If you want a web site with links
to every imaginable data warehousing vendor click here
to go to Larry Greenfield's site.
I hope that I put up some links that are news to you.
Happy surfing.
Links to Other Links Pages
Link
|
Description
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| Quotable Quotes from Metagroup |
This is a page pretty much dedicated to comments by
Metagroup and my comments on the comments by Metagroup. I'm sure you will
find some of these interesting, and challenging. |
| Quotable Quotes from Gartner Group |
This is a page pretty much dedicated to comments by Gartner
Group and my comments on the comments by Gartner Group. I'm sure you will
find some of these interesting, and challenging. |
Non Vendors
Link
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Description
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| Bill Inmon |
Bill is a prolific writer. I have lost count of how many
articles he has written over the years along with his books. Bill was the
public pioneer of data warehousing. And like so many pioneers he has
had more than his fair share of arrows in his back. I, for one, owe Bill a
greater debt than I can repay for patiently publishing all those articles.
Being in Australia it was hard to be in touch with developers of data
warehouses in the early 90s. No such thing as dwlist then.
Bill and associates have invested a lot of time and effort in
collecting and collating a very large number of white papers and diagrams
onto this site. It is well worth registering and having a look
around. The regular newsletters he publishes from this site are
always fascinating reading.
When I was Professional Services Manager at Ardent we used to provide
all the 'Tech Topics' papers to major customers at no charge so that we
could assume that level of knowledge in discussions with our customers.
Since those early days the 'Data Warehouse' has evolved into one component
of the 'Corporate Information Factory' and there are many white papers on
this topic as well.
|
| Ralph Kimball |
My opinion, if Bill was the public pioneer of data
warehousing Ralph was the 'less public' pioneer until his book of
1994.
Ralph was one of the co-founders of Metaphor Computer Systems. One of
the problems to solve at Metaphor was how to allow marketing analysts to
ask complex multi-dimensional questions of a database when the processor
was going to be a Motorola 68020 with 16MB of memory. The
star schema turned out to run very efficiently on that hardware and it has
proven very scalable on standard databases.
I personally wish that the whole world could see and use a Metaphor
desktop. It was so much more elegant than Windows or OS/2. It was
the Metaphor system that enchanted me and got me into data warehousing in
the first place. So, I also owe Ralph an unpayable debt.
Metaphor developed, almost exclusively, star schema data
warehouses. I am reliably informed there were 300+ customers with
installed Metaphor systems by 1991. I know there were at least 400
by late 1993 because most of them turned up to the users conference. The
customers of Metaphor were the "'Who's who" of the fortune 1000.
However, the skills of designing them and building them were treated like
'gold' inside Metaphor so the rest of the world didn't really hear much
about star schemas until Ralph's book.
On Ralph's site now you can find the schedule for his classes (which I
highly recommend) and a series of technical tips for building data
warehouses.
Note. Ralph recently updated his web site to organise articles he has
published to be a little easier to search for and to download. I'd
encourage you to take a look at this
page. If you read all these articles and understand them you would be
doing very well indeed.
|
| Larry Greenfield |
Larry Greenfield's site is one of the best collections of
links to other data warehousing sites and articles on the web. I
have no idea where he gets the time to develop it and keep it up to
date. When I was thinking of doing my own site I thought of keeping
more links, but Larry has done such a fine job over the years, I think
this set of links is best left
to him.
Larry has also used his site much like mine to have his own personal
'rants and raves' which are well worth reading. He was the first
person I saw who actually published an article on 'The case against data
warehousing'. That was an interesting concept and very interesting article
too. I suggest you take a look at Larry's site.
|
| The Data Warehouse
Institute |
My opinion is that TDWI was one of the best things to
happen to the Data Warehousing Industry. For the first time there was a
body that could concentrate on publishing quality articles and running
quality conferences specifically on data warehousing without so much
obvious need to 'keep the sponsors' happy. Their materials are excellent
and a membership of the TDWI is well worth having. |
| Intelligent
Enterprise Data Warehousing Page |
The Intelligent Enterprise Magazine is one of the best
sources of articles and information on what is happening lately in the
data warehousing world. The articles stored on the data warehouse
page are interesting and informative. Well worth a look. |
Vendors
Link
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Description
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| Business Objects |
Of late, Business Objects is still managing to generate
revenue growth around 10% above the prior year. This during a time
when most software companies are happy to be only declining 10% year on
year.
A few years ago Business Objects and it's major competitor,
MicroStrategy, were fighting it out for leadership in the market
place. Business Objects has won and MicroStrategy, fine tool that it
is, has been doing it very tough over the last few years.
There is little doubt in my mind that Business Objects is going to be
the leading ROLAP tool for some time to come.
There are quite a few papers/documents on this site that you might want
to download and take a look at.
|
| Cognos |
If Business Objects is the leading ROLAP tool Cognos is
putting in it's claim as the leading MOLAP tool. However, the competition
is certainly tougher in this area. Other vendors of MOLAP tools
include Microsoft, Oracle, Hyperion and Seagate Software. All these
companies have deep pockets and Hyperion (arguably) has the best
technology of the lot.
The new web interface of Cognos is very good and their suite of
pre-built databases and applications is sure to be interesting to those
companies who can live without highly customised data warehouses. It's
well worth having a look around their site to learn more about end user
information delivery.
|
Data Mirror
datawarehousing.com |
Most people in the data warehousing community already know
about the 'dwlist'. This is the most active discussion group on data
warehousing that I am aware of. It is sponsored by Data
Mirror. If you are not on dwlist I recommend you get on it. To get
instructions or help with list commands, send a message to here
with the word “help” in the body of the message. Data
Mirror also host a general data warehousing web site called
datawarehousing.com.
|
Informatica
Ascential Software |
Though the battle of end user tools is getting close to an
end the battle for ETL tool supremacy is no-where near over. The two
leading tools are Powercenter from Informatica and DataStage from
Ascential Software. Just to make it interesting other major ETL vendors include
Microsoft, Oracle, Business Objects and Cognos. Right now Informatica is the leader by published revenues of ETL
software but this is a tough, tough market. I thought that a winner
would have been decided by now but Ascential has a ton of cash in the bank
from the Informix sale and is rapidly expanding the product with well
aimed acquisitions. Not to mention all the other companies are investing
in their ETL tools. One thing that does puzzle me is the amount of
spend in ETL tool development. My opinion is that Prism showed us
that there was not that much money in ETL. Indeed, I am doing my own small
part in making ETL easier wih the Instant Data Warehouse and the C Data
Warehouse Generator.
It is also interesting to note that Informatica is making a pretty big
play into the analytical applications market. This would seem to be an
indication that Informatica, at least, think there is more growth to be
had in analytical applications over ETL tools. I think the
Analytical Applications market
is a bit over-hyped, but I could be wrong. |
Industry Analysts
Link
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Description
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| Meta Group |
Meta Group has paid a significant amount of attention to
data warehousing over a long period. Aaron Zornes is a well regarded data
warehousing commentator. Also, I know Doug Laney personally and I have
found his comments on data warehousing to be well thought through. And
Doug is not at all afraid of being 'controversial' in his comments which I
think is great. Some of
the papers available from Meta are well worth a read. |
| Gartner Group |
Gartner Group has also paid a significant amount of attention to
data warehousing over a long period. Howard Dresner is the Editor in Chief
of the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing research for Gartner
Group and he has been doing a fine job at that for a long time now. Some
of the papers that are currently available from Gartner Group on Business
Intelligence and Data Warehousing are well worth a read. I have
picked out some of the references and put them onto my Quotable Quotes from Gartner Group
page. |
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