Re: On the subject of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes & OLAP....

Will wrote:
>
> On the subject of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes & OLAP….
>
> I would like to speak frankly about Data Warehouses, Data Cubes and
> OLAP (on-line analytical processing). Has it dawned on anyone else
> that these buzz words were created by some geek who decided to take a
> stab at marketing? Knowing that to the backwoods manager who knows
> little of technology that new innovative names for old concepts would
> help to sale their products.

While you have a small point with this - check the history of the terminology behind "OLAP, OLTP, Cubes and Warehouses" before you spout in this particular topic..
Part of the reason for the 'new terms' (which IIRC are roughly 15 years old) is because of different lineage (Cubes did not oringally get stored in a relational database) and a need to differentiate the design methods (OLTP applications and OLAP applications have basic design differences in order to meet business requirements.)

>
> I mean seriously, what is the story here? In a nut shell, and please
> stop me if you disagree, but isn’t a data warehouse simply a
> database? Can’t you do everything on a conventional database
> like SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 that you can do on these new
> proprietary Data Warehouse constructs? I mean who are they trying to
> fool?

Now you can "do everything on a conventional database". 5 years ago was a different story.

>
> Take a look, for instance, at Data Cubes. Who hasn’t noticed
> the striking similarity between data cubes and views used in all the
> more robust databases? Also, what about OLAP? OLAP is nothing more
> than a report generator. There’s nothing you can do with these
> million dollar price tagged Data Warehouse total solution packages
> that I can’t do with SQL Server, Oracle or DB2…for that
> matter Microsoft Access.

Which is a credit to some fairly serious skull sweat that's gone into consolidating the different technologies.

>
> As an example some sales people for Metadata Corporation has the Vice
> President of I.T. in Nashville, for Healthspring, sold on their total
> solution data respository which is such a scam. All they had to do
> was throw a couple of buzzwords at him and they have him hypnotized.

Now you are getting to the meat of your email! I get the feeling your issue really is that some management styles (some specific managers) that reinforce the reality of Peter's Principle. Incompetence has it's own rewards.

>
> Personally, I feel that these kinds of marketing practices undermine
> our industry. It helps to unravel what little standards or
> consistency we have. What do you guys think?
>

I think the marketeers are doing what they are paid to do. So are the sales guys. Doesn't mean I have to like their style or tactics. However, those styles and tactics can yield great rewards - just look at good ol' Microsoft (amongst others). And just like Pavlov, the industry keeps rewarding and reinforcing some specific behaviours. C'est la vie!

As someone once said "You always have a choice. If you don't like it, you can choose to leave"

> Stuart
 

-- 
/Hans
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