Initial Steps-Data Warehouse Development

Dimensional Modeling

Now that we are aware of the basic concepts of Data Warehouse, it is important to understand that one of the key steps involved in the warehouse development involves understanding the requirements and presenting them in a view/model that is easy to understand for – users, developer and all the involved parties.

To provide this view the warehouses are modeled multidimensional with the help of Use Cases. Data models should always be easy to understand, read and develop.

Data Warehouse requirements have different abstraction levels for detailed, testable and complete specifications for the entire team. These levels are-

• -        Business requirements
• -        User requirements
• -        Detailed System Requirements
• -        Requirements Attributes (Functional, Information and Other)

These requirements are then captured in the Use cases that follows an iterative approach.

BUS Matrix

All the operational activities defined for an organization are captured in a BUS Matrix where each row defines a business process.

For instance, in the BUS Matrix defined above, each of the business process are captured as a separate row in the Matrix. Such as-

• ·     Retail Sales
• ·     Retail Inventory
• ·     Retail Deliveries
• ·     Warehouse Inventory
• ·     Warehouse Deliveries
• ·     Purchase Orders 

Each process captured above corresponds to one row each in the matrix.