The Enterprise Big Data Lake

Chapter 6. Optimizing for Self-Service

The power of data can be realized only if decision makers can base their actions on the data. In the past, business users had to wait for specialists to prepare data and run analyses. This effectively prevented many worthwhile queries from being run, and routinely led to delays, mistakes, and misinterpretations.

I once spoke to a doctor from a leading medical research hospital who had used a week’s vacation to take a SQL class. He explained that he was concerned about the efficacy of a specific medical treatment protocol, but he couldn’t change the protocol without proving that the changes were safe. He’d spent a year trying to explain what he wanted to IT—waiting weeks to receive the data sets, realizing that they weren’t what he was looking for, requesting more data, waiting for it, then investing more time only to discover that it wasn’t what he needed either. He eventually became so frustrated that he took the SQL class so he could explore the data himself. Within two weeks of applying his newly acquired knowledge, he was able to find the data he needed to improve the treatment protocol. This is just one of many stories that showcase the value of self-service and the amazing breakthroughs that analysts can make if they are able to explore the data directly.

This chapter delves into how an organization has to reconsider its ways of collecting, labeling, and sharing data in order to achieve the self-service model required to empower business ...