Mastering Data Warehouse Aggregates: Solutions for Star Schema Performance

Foreword

In 1998 I wrote the foreword for Chris Adamson and Mike Venerable's book Data Warehouse Design Solutions (Wiley, 1998). Over the intervening eight years I have been delighted to track that book, as it has stayed high in the list of data warehouse best sellers, even through today. Chris and Mike had identified a set of data warehouse design challenges and were able to speak very effectively in that book to the community of data warehouse designers.

Viewed in the right perspective, the mission of data warehousing has not changed at all since 1998! In that foreword, I wrote that the data warehouse must be driven from business analysis needs, must be a mirror of management's urgent priorities, and must be a presentation facility that is understandable and fast. All of these perspectives have held true through today. While our databases have exploded in size, and the database content has become much more operational, the original description of the data warehouse rings true. If anything, the data warehouse, in its role as the platform for all forms of business intelligence, has become much more important than it was in 1998.

At the same time that the reach of the data warehouse has penetrated to every worker's desktop, we have all been swept along by the development of the Internet, and particularly search engines like Google. This parallel revolution, surprisingly, has sent data warehousing and business intelligence a powerful and simple message. As the saying goes, "The ...