A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing

Chapter 9. Architecture, Infrastructure, and Tools

This chapter is intended to introduce a nontechnical audience to architecture concepts. If you are a systems architect, this chapter is not intended for you. There is a lot of discipline and rigor associated with systems architecture, but these topics are beyond the scope of this book and are not covered in this chapter. This chapter will do the following:

• Provide an introduction to architecture

• Outline the benefits of architecture

• Discuss the basics of data architecture for a data warehouse

• Review the technical architecture for a data warehouse

• Share the fundamentals of finding tools that will work for your organization

For readers who are interested in gaining more in-depth knowledge of architecture, many fine resources are available. A search for books on enterprise architecture will yield many options. Several books specific to data warehousing that include architecture concepts include the following:

• The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, Second Edition, by Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross, Warren Thornthwaite, Joy Mundy, and Bob Becker (Wiley, 2008)

• Building the Data Warehouse, Fourth Edition, by William Inmon (Wiley, 2005)

• Mastering Data Warehouse Design, by Claudia Imhoff, Nicholas Galemmo, and Jonathon Geiger (Wiley, 2003)

What Is Architecture?

There are many different definitions for architecture. Rather than introduce another one, a search on system architecture at www.dictionary.com returns the following:

A system architecture or systems ...