Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Programming

Chapter 24. Data Warehousing

Well, while it may seem that we've already roamed all over the realm of SQL Server, we have, up to this point, been working safely within the type of databases that are the most common, and that most database developers are the most comfortable with: The Online Transaction Processing — or OLTP — database.

This chapter, however, will turn things somewhat upside down (in terms of the traditional "rules" that determine how we do things). When, for example, we talked about design earlier in this book or in my Beginning title, we were talking mostly in terms of a normalized database. In this chapter, we'll be largely tossing that out the window. Instead of the transaction-oriented databases we've focused on up to this point, we're going to focus on databases and models that are oriented around the notion of data analysis. We will, for now, focus primarily on data warehousing and the special needs relating to its storage ramifications and reporting in data warehousing situations. We'll explore a new sea of terms that you may not have heard before — the lingo of data warehousing and analytics — the language of Business Intelligence (often referred to simply as BI). We'll also explore the world of multidimensional modeling by taking a quick look at yet another service included with SQL Server — Analysis Services.

In this chapter we will:

• Discuss the differences between the needs of transaction processing versus analysis processing

• Discuss how these differences necessarily ...