The Instant Data Warehouse Released

15/01/2003 -- Hello and Welcome!! Today I am very pleased to announce the release of the 'Instant Data Warehouse'. This is my second product in the area of improving productivity in the ETL development processes for a data warehouse.

As you will read below, this is somewhat of a 'breakthrough' product. The only word that I have found that effectively describes watching the Instant Data Warehouse run is 'magic'. It is now possible to load star schema data warehouses without having to write mapping code to load the tables. Can you imagine what building data warehouses will be like with no coding required to actually load the tables. This is 'magic'.

I have worked for so long building data warehouses and built so much code, so many 'jobs', so many 'mappings' and I have always been searching for 'a better way'. When I set up the Instant Data Warehouse in minutes to do what I have spent days and weeks coding in the past and then watch it process flawlessly, with no possibility of introducing 'bugs' through code changes, 'magic' is the only work I can think of for it. If only I had developed this 10 years ago I would have saved myself so many weeks and months of development and bug chasing!!

The Instant Data Warehouse is a tool to enable you to build your data warehouse much faster than previously possible using any currently available technologies.

The Instant Data Warehouse imbeds all my years of experience, and the experience of many of my colleagues, in doing ETL work with a focus on:

	Making it dramatically faster, cheaper and easier to build star schema data warehouses.
	Delivering this capability as a very inexpensive tool, readily available to anyone.
	Being complementary to existing data warehousing environments and easily integrated into existing tool sets.

The Instant Data Warehouse:

	Is priced to be easily within the reach of all organisations who would benefit from building a data warehouse.
	Quite literally makes available 'star schema data warehousing for all companies'.
	Is my 'best effort to date' to design and build a tool that makes the greatest possible contribution to the 'data warehousing industry' that has been so generous to me for more than a decade now.

Productivity Improvements

Using the Instant Data Warehouse you can expect to be able to:

	Build 5-6 dimension table processing jobs per day per experienced developer*.
	Build 2-3 fact table processing jobs per day per experienced developer*.
	Make changes to the columns stored in fact or dimension tables with no code changes and practically no testing.

*An experienced developer means a person experienced at implementing star schema data warehouses using the Instant Data Warehouse. Instant Data Warehouse 'developers' do not need to know any 'language' except how to create tables and views in the source databases and the data warehouse database. There is NO CODE required to load a star schema data warehouse from a staging area using the Instant Data Warehouse.

This is, in some cases, an order of magnitude faster than writing and maintaining the equivalent processing using the leading ETL tools available today. In many cases it is extremely difficult to replicate the processing of the Instant Data Warehouse in today's ETL tools. I know because I have tried to emulate the processing features of the Instant Data Warehouse in DataStage and Informatica and, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible.

Who is the Instant Data Warehouse Intended for?

The Instant Data Warehouse is intended for companies who fit into one or more of the following categories:

You are building a star schema data warehouse on a tight budget.

Which is most companies at the moment.

You want to write an absolute minimum of any kind of code to build the data warehouse.

You have decided not to purchase an ETL tool.

You have bought an ETL tool and want to complement the ETL tool with features of the Instant Data Warehouse.

Your data warehouse loading times can be achieved using ODBC rather than native drivers supported by embedded SQL.

You have an existing data warehouse and you are finding that the maintenance cost for new columns is significant. You want to reduce your maintenance costs.

Summary of Major Features

The most important features of the Instant Data Warehouse are:

You write NO CODE to read data from one ODBC data source and load it into a data warehouse accessed via another ODBC data source. That's correct. NO CODE. I do believe this is a 'first'.

The Instant Data Warehouse maintains:

	Type 1 and Type 2 dimensions.
	Detail level and summary level fact tables.

The Instant Data Warehouse is aware of column names and data types.

	The Instant Data Warehouse moves data from source to target based on column names not based on a 'mapping'/'job' that you have to define in a 'repository'. You tell the Instant Data Warehouse the source view and target view as run time parameters and it figures out which columns to move by matching column name.
	Because all data movement is by column name when you add new columns to fact or dimension tables (a very common occurrence) you need *NO CODE CHANGES* to add these new columns.

All regular ODBC data types are supported. (The exception is that blobs are not currently supported.)

The Instant Data Warehouse supports many levels of aggregates in dimension and summary fact tables and enables the addition of new aggregates with no code changes. Just like my published C code.

The Instant Data Warehouse is null aware.

For example in a type 2 dimension if a field has changed from null to a value then the Instant Data Warehouse is aware of the change to the field.

The Instant Data Warehouse includes auditability and control features so that it is possible to track the number of rows moved between files and tables for every run by userid used to run the job.

The Instant Data Warehouse only accesses views and therefore places no restrictions on the names of the tables in your source systems or data warehouse.

It is written in C++/ODBC and is written to be able to run on win32 and unix. Currently it is tested on SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000. Oracle users should contact me to discuss availability of the Oracle version.

I am very excited at being able to bring this product to market. I know that ETL developers the world over will want to use the Instant Data Warehouse because it will save weeks, if not months, of very tedious development time. The Instant Data Warehouse will also make ETL maintenance for the code that loads data from the staging area to the data warehouse a thing of the past. This has been one of my greatest frustrations with the ETL tools I have used and now it is gone. Adding a new column to be passed directly through to a fact or dimension table is now trivial!!

If you would like to read more about the Instant Data Warehouse please click here.

Best Regards

Peter Nolan

For More Information Contact:

Peter Nolan
Data Warehousing Consultant
Tel: 353-87-958-1732
Internet: peter@peternolan.net

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The Instant Data Warehouse Released

Productivity Improvements

Who is the Instant Data Warehouse Intended for?

Summary of Major Features

Send mail to peter@peternolan.net with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2002 Peter Nolan Last modified: January 14, 2003

Send mail to peter@peternolan.net with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2002 Peter Nolan
Last modified: January 14, 2003