My first Publication Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design-eBook | Page 17

XVIII
Introduction
Who Is This Book For?
This book is for the
whole agile DW/BI
team, to help you
not only gather
requirements but
also communicate
design ideas
It is aimed at both
new and experienced
DW/BI practitioners.
It’s a quick-study
guide to dimensional
modeling and a
source of new
dimensional design
patterns
This book is intended for data modelers, business analysts, data architects, and
developers working on data warehouses and business intelligence systems. All
members of an agile DW/BI team—not just those directly responsible for gathering
BI requirements or designing the data warehouse—will find the BEAM ✲ notation
a powerful addition to standard entity-relationship diagrams for communicating
dimensional design ideas and estimating data tasks with their colleagues. To get the
most from this book, readers should have a basic knowledge of database concepts
such as tables, columns, rows, keys, and joins.
For those new to data warehousing, this book provides a quick-study introduction
to dimensional modeling techniques. For those of you who would like more
background on the techniques covered, the later chapters and Appendix C provide
references to case studies in other texts that will help you gain additional business
insight. Experienced data warehousing professionals will find that this book offers
a fresh perspective on familiar dimensional modeling patterns, covering many in
more detail than previously available, and adding several new ones. For all readers,
this book offers a radically new agile way of engaging with business users and kick-
starting their next warehouse development project.
Meet The Modelstormers or How To Use This Book
Hello, I’m over here
and I’m your fast
track through this
book
You may have already noticed the marginalia (non-contagious), on your left at the
moment. This provides a “fast track” summary for readers in a hurry. This agile
path through our text was inspired by David A. Taylor’s object technology series of
books. The margins of this book also contain a cast of anything but marginal
characters. They are the modelstormers you need on your agile DW/BI team. We
used them to highlight key features in the text such as tips, warnings, references and
example modeling dialogues. They appear in the following order (in Chapters 1-9):
The bright modeler, not surprisingly, has some bright ideas. His tips, techniques and
practical modeling advice, distilled from the current topic, will help you improve
your design.
The experienced dimensional modeler has seen it all before. He’s here to warn you
when an activity or decision can steal your time, sanity or agility. Later in the book
he follows the pattern users (see below) to tell you about the consequences or side
effects of using their recommended design patterns. He would still recommend
you use their patterns though—just with a little care.