3.3. SIGNIFICANT TRENDS
Some experts feel that technology has been driving data warehousing until now. These experts declare that we are now beginning to see important progress in software. In the next few years, data warehousing is expected make big strides in software, especially for optimizing queries, indexing very large tables, enhancing SQL, improving data compression, and expanding dimensional modeling.
Let us separate out the significant trends and discuss each briefly. Be prepared to visit each trend, one by one—everyone has a serious impact on data warehousing. As we walk through each trend, try to grasp its significance and be sure that you perceive its relevance to your company's data warehouse. Be prepared to answer the question: What must you do to take advantage of the trend in your data warehouse?
Figure 3-3. Data warehousing products by functions.
3.3.1. Multiple Data Types
When you build the first iteration of your data warehouse, you may just include numeric data. But soon you will realize that including structured numeric data alone is not enough. Be prepared to consider other data types as well.
Traditionally, companies included structured data, mostly numeric, in their data warehouses. From this point of view, decision support systems were divided into two camps: data warehousing dealt with structured data; knowledge management involved unstructured data. ...
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