Re: Datamation: Don't warehouse dirty data

In article <DGoBzr.GM2_at_world.std.com>, mew_at_world.std.com says...
>
>The October 15 issue of Datamation has a lengthy article with the
>above title about data warehousing. It starts off "The old
>programmers' slogan "Garbage in, garbage out" is true with
>a vengeance in a data warehouse."
>
>Mike W.
>
>Michael Willett, EE
>mwillett_at_storage.com
>Storage Computer Corp.
>http://www.storage.com/
>11 Riverside Street
>Nashua, NH 03062
>Tel. 603-880-3005
>
>:::I/O-accelerated, very fast disk arrays for all SCSI systems to 1,000
 GB:::
>

I went to see Pyramid sales presentation today at which Ralph Kimball spoke. He raised the interesting point that building a data warehouse can help show the problems in the related OLTP data. When a manager sees a zip code dimension and notices that a good deal of his customers are coded as 'zip code not available' he quickly gets the picture that perhaps a problem exists with the source data.

The warehouse cannot create correct data, it can only reflect the correctness (or lack thereof) of the underlying source data.

              Benjamin Taub
             btaub_at_dspace.com
          DATASPACE INCORPORATED
            ph:  (313) 761-5962
            fax: (313) 761-5967
       DSS & Data Warehouse design,