The Data Warrior

Changing the world, one data model at a time. How can I help you?

Archive for the month “January, 2012”

10 Jan 2012

Announcement: Data Vault Model & Methodology Certification Class in Montreal!

I just found out today that my good friend Dan is going to teach a Data Vault certification class later this month in Montreal, Canada.

Guess what? I have already registered!

What a great opportunity to learn about Data Vault from the guy who invented it.

Plus you will get to be part of an elite group of data warehouse professionals who are actually certified as Data Vault Practitioners -assuming you pass the test of course 😉

This is going to be the only such class he will teach this year in North America so this is a rare opportunity. The class is being coordinated by agileDSS in Montreal. You can get details and register here. Don’t waste any time: the class starts January 25th and there are only 5 seats left as of today.

So, you might ask why I am going to this class – “Didn’t you coauthor a book with Dan and help him with the most recent one?”

Why yes, yes I did.

So why am I going to spend my hard earned money and take time away from my current gig to fly from Houston, Texas to Montreal to take this class?

  1. Dan is my friend. I want to support him in his business ventures.
  2. Dan is my friend. I haven’t seen him face-to-face since he moved from Colorado to Vermont and I moved from Colorado to Texas. This is a rare opportunity for us to catch up a bit in person.
  3. Dan is some kind of genius. He invented a new way to model data warehouse structures and has proven its effectiveness over the last 10+ years. It is not often you get to learn from someone like that (live and in person).
  4. I can always stand a refresher course. I have not been in a formal Data Vault class, taught by someone else, in close to 10 years. I am pretty sure Dan has come up with some new variations, interpretations, techniques, and in-the-trenches war stories since then!
  5. I love networking with other data warehouse professionals in person.
  6. I have never been to Montreal.
  7. It’s a new year. Time to invest a bit in my own professional development.
  8. Oh, and did I mention, Dan is my friend.

So why don’t you sign up too and join me in Montreal? I guarantee it will change the way you do data warehousing.

And you get to hang out with me and Dan! Such a deal!

So go to the link, register, and tell them the Oracle Data Warrior sent you.

See you in Montreal!

Kent

Posted in Data Vault and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
06 Jan 2012

Don’t forget to register for RMOUG Training Days

Yes, it’s that time of year – time to get on board for the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group annual training event in Denver, Colorado. All I can say is that it is certainly the biggest and best regional Oracle conference I have ever been too. (To be fair – I helped organize the very first one and quite a few after that!)

Don’t miss it – register soon.

I will not be attending in person this year but I will be there remotely delivering part of the Data Warehouse Performance university session.

Anyway – check it out .

Later,

Kent

Posted in Oracle and tagged | Leave a comment
03 Jan 2012
3 Comments

2012 – Year of the Data Vault?

Well, several of us sure hope so! 😉

Data Vault Modeling appears to finally be catching on in the DW community here in the USA and in Canada. My co-author (and co-conspirator) Dan Linstedt provided some details on organizations and consultants who have been successful using Data Vault in 2011. We got some great quotes from a few industry luminaries to boot! You can see the details in his year-end blog post.

We (Dan & I) spent a fair amount of time (i.e., years) and effort trying to get to this point. One big highlight (for me anyway) was finally seeing the technical book on data vault data modeling get published. We started writing parts of the book over five years ago, but things like making the mortgage payment kind of got in the way. Writing and self-publishing a book can be pretty intense so it is really nice to see it in print. You can get your very own hard-copy on Amazon, or an e-copy (with some cool bonuses) from Dan’s Learn Data Vault site. (Full disclosure – if you go buy the book from either site, I will of course make huge piles of $$$$ in royalties that might let me spring for lunch occasionally.)

If you are not really sure what Data Vault is all about and want the short course first, check out my Introduction to Data Vault slides from my presentation at Oracle Open World 2011.  I had about 30 people attend the session and had some great discussions with the attendees. That was pretty gratifying since it was the LAST session on the LAST day of the conference.

So 2011 was a very successful year for getting the word out that there is a better way to develop your enterprise data warehouse.

Here’s to continuing the momentum in 2012.

Later.

Kent

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse and tagged , , ,
01 Jan 2012
1 Comment

Happy New Year and Welcome!

Well, I finally did it – I started a blog.  Figured it was time and a good way to start the New Year off.

The site will likely change over the next few weeks and months as I learn more about WordPress, so bear with me and just consider it a work in progress.

So what will I talk about? As the blog sub-title indicates, topics will vary. Expect to see things in these areas:

  • All things related to Oracle Corp and Oracle products (including Oracle Racing)
  • Oracle-related User Groups (like ODTUG and RMOUG)
  • Data modeling
  • Data warehousing
  • Dan Linstedt’s Data Vault Data Modeling Technique
  • Martial Arts (TaeKwonDo, Tai Chi, Combat Hapkido and more)
  • Health and Fitness (including Chi Gung and Yoga)
  • My Life and Career
  • Whatever else I feel like discussing

So to start out I am actually going to refer you to two articles I recently wrote for the ODTUG Kscope site (where I am the Fitness Guru).  They are Becoming an Oracle Warrior  and Becoming an Oracle Warrior, Part 2. (These were the inspiration for the name of this blog)

I hope these two articles will help you get 2012 off to a healthy start.

Happy New Year from Texas!

Later gang.

Kent

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