Chapter 2. Defining and Importing Source Data Structures
The Warehouse Builder software and Oracle database have been installed, and we're ready to begin building our data warehouse. The first thing we have to do is define what our sources of data will be. If we are going to build a useful data warehouse, we have to know what kinds of information our users are going to need out of the warehouse. To know that, we have to know the following:
The format in which the data is currently stored and where it is stored.
Whether there is a transactional database currently in use or not, which supports day-to-day operations and from which we'll be pulling the data.
A transactional database is different from a data warehouse database in that it is designed to support the day-to-day transactions that keep an organization running.
Whether the database is an Oracle database or another vendor's database such as Microsoft SQL Server.
Whether there are any flat files of information saved from database tables or...
