Data Vault Certification Class – Day 3 (It’a a wrap!)
Well, not so cold today in Montreal. Instead we got very cold rain and snow mix. Yuk. (But I definitely want to come back in the summer!)
This morning, Dan dived into how to load the Data Vault with all new material he has not taught in the certification class before. We really got lucky by attending this class. I knew most of the concepts, and have implemented most of them, but his new slides are just killer. They really get the point across and cleared up a few points for me too.
Not only do the slides include sample SQL for various parts of the load, and the logical patterns, Dan even demonstrated some working code on his really cool, high-powered laptop. It was great for the class to see the Data Vault concepts put into practice. (And he of course had some more tales to tell)
Cool Phrase for the Day
Short Circuit Boolean Evaluation: A mathematical concept, that Dan laid on us, that is used to get very fast results from the Data Vault change detection code . We use it in doing column compares on attribute data to determine if a Satellite row has changes.
In Oracle it looks like this: decode(src_att1, trg_att1,0,1) = 1
In ANSI-SQL it is a bit longer but has the same effect:
CASE WHEN (src_att1 is null and trg_att1 is null or src_att1 = trg_att1))
THEN 1 else 0 = 0
I have been using this for years (learned it from Dan) but had no idea there was a math term for it.
Okay so I am a geek. 🙂
The Test
After all that cool stuff came the certification test.
Not easy. My hand cramped writing out the answers.
We get our results next week. (Dan has a fun weekend ahead of him doing a bunch of scoring).
I am sure everyone in class will do fine. As I said, they all seemed to get it.
Anyway, the class is over now and I am in a hotel in Vermont (where it is snowing now). I fly back to Houston in the morning.
I had a good week here in the northeast (despite the weather). It was definitely worth the time and money to come for this class. I met some great people, learned a lot, and got to spend time with my good friend Dan.
Watch out Montreal – you are about to be descended upon by a whole new batch of Data Vault experts.
It could change the way you do data warehousing.
Later.
Kent
The Data Warrior 
Hi Kent
Indeed, It was great to spend 3 days with Dan, you (we meet for the first time) and everybody else from Montreal attending the course.
This certification class gave me the opportunity to validate the Data Vault model I conceived a few months ago. I wanted to review some of the decisions we took and planned for future enhancements. At the same time, I was able to gather new material never tough before as well as get clarification on more advance topics such as the UNIT OF WORK and why performance is within the core DV architecture.
The certification exam that took place in the last afternoon was complete, in the sense that it covered basic concepts, golden rules and some advance topics. I’m eagerly awaiting the results.
Cheers,
Pierre.
Pierre,
Good to hear from you. Glad you found the class so helpful. I did as well.
It was great to have the opportunity to meet you and all the folks in Montreal. I hope we get to meet face to face in the future at another event (or next time I visit your city).
Best wishes on the continued success of your Data Vault project and all your other endeavors.
Kent