The Data Warrior

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

Archive for the month “October, 2012”

27 Oct 2012

List of Top Data Vault Resources (UPDATED 2016)

As I finished out my latest contract, my team mates wanted to know where they could go to get their data vault questions answered (besides emailing me!).

So I put together this list for them and figured the readers of my blog would probably like to see the same list.

Here it is!

My Stuff

Introduction to Data Vault 1.0 (pdf):

https://kentgraziano.com/white-papers/

Book:

Intro to Agile Data Engineering Using Data Vault 2.0

Slides

Introduction to  Data Vault and Why Data Vault?  (ppt):

http://www.slideshare.net/kgraziano/why-data-vault?

http://www.slideshare.net/kgraziano/agile-data-warehouse-modeling-introduction-to-data-vault-data-modeling

Dan’s Data Vault Books

The NEW Data Vault 2.0 Book:

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Data-Warehouse-Vault-ebook/dp/B015KKYFGO/

The Data Vault Modeling book (DV 1.0):

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Charge-Your-Data-Warehouse/dp/1463778686/

The Data Vault Modeling book – Kindle version:

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Charge-Your-Warehouse-ebook/dp/B00853265G/

The Data Vault Modeling book – downloadable PDF version:

http://learndatavault.com/books/super-charge-your-data-warehouse/

Data Vault Implementation using Pentaho (DV 1.0):

http://www.lulu.com/shop/peter-van-til/implementing-a-datavault-architecture-with-pentaho-data-integration/paperback/product-17580260.html

Around the Web

Dan has two online classes for Implementing Data Vault (1.0):

  1. Using Informatica. You can see that here.
  2. Using SQL. You can see that here.

Dan’s main site and blog – Subscribe to this to get email updates/announcements regarding data vault:

http://danlinstedt.com/

Best overall source of Q&A – Data Vault Discussion group on LinkedIn:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=44926&trk=hb_side_g

Martin Evers,  data vault expert from Europe,  (just one of his articles) :

http://dm-unseen.blogspot.nl/2012/10/data-vault-business-key-mutations-matter.html

On YouTube

Data Vault videos from Dan (and Sanjay):

http://www.youtube.com/user/learndatavault

Older videos (includes RapidACE demo):

http://www.youtube.com/user/dlinstedt/videos?sort=dd&flow=list&page=1&view=0

Data Vault Architecture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmFENnqgoS0&feature=youtu.be&a  (BTW – turn the volume down first. The “theme” music is loud)

Well that’s the main ones for now.

What’s your favorite?

Enjoy!

Kent

The Data Warrior

Data Vault Master and CDVP2

Authorized DV Bootcamp Instructor

Posted in Data Vault and tagged , , ,
21 Oct 2012

Standards? We Don’t Need No Stinking Standards!

Well, actually we do need standards.

Especially if we want to have any consistency in the systems we develop, or the models we build.

For years people in the data warehouse arena have literally begged Dan Linstedt, inventor of the Data Vault Model and Methodology, to create books and training materials on Data Vault.

They wanted to know how he got the results he was getting for his clients.

They wanted to understand how to properly build a Data Vault.

They wanted STANDARDS.

Well, ask and ye shall receive.

Recently Dan put this on his blog:

For many many years I have written and maintained Data Vault Standards v1.x.  Well, I’ve released them on Amazon for you.  These are the DV1.0 Standards, and are the same standards document I used to hand out in my certification classes.

Apparently there are folks out there who either don’t know about the standards, or who have had some confusion over the fact that there ever were standards.

I wanted to make it free – but unfortunately I was not able to do that.  So, I’ve made the price to be $0.99 USD on Amazon.  Again, these are Data Vault 1.0 Modeling Standards and Data Vault 1.0 Loading Standards.

via Data Vault Modeling & Methodology – Data Vault 1.0 Modeling and Loading Standards.

So there you have it – the official standards for Data Vault 1.0.

Go get ’em here.

Read ’em.

Use ’em.

Your data warehouse will thank you.

Kent

Oracle Data Warrior

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment
14 Oct 2012

Hurry – Only 24 Hours Left to Get a Free Conference Registration

As I have written before, I love Oracle User Groups.

My two most favorite groups are the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) and the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG).

These two groups put on what are arguably the best annual conferences for users of Oracle technology – by users, for users.

Over the past 20+ years I have attended most of their events – and NEVER paid a registration fee.

This was very helpful when my boss said there was no money for training. I just said “I get in free”.

So would you like to attend one of these events for FREE?

All you have to do is submit an abstract to present a session. If you get selected, your registration fee is waived. This is worth over $1000.

But you have to hurry, the deadline for submission is Monday October 15th, 2012.

Details:

RMOUG Training Days is  February 11-13, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. (Right in the middle of ski season!)

Go here to submit an abstract.

ODTUG’s KScope event will be June 23-27th in wonderful New Orleans.

Go here to submit an abstract.

I have submitted multiple abstracts to both events.

So what are you waiting for – go submit now!

See you in Denver and New Orleans in 2013.

Kent

P.S. My Kindle ebook  started out as a user group presentation. No telling what you might do with your presentation.

Posted in ODTUG, Oracle, User Groups and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
04 Oct 2012

Oracle OpenWorld 2012: Day 4

It was another beautiful, sunny day in San Francisco. I started the day, again, with some morning Chi Gung, then I enjoyed the morning keynote watching the big screen in Yerba Buena Gardens. Quite a pleasant way to listen to these talks.

It was a light day session-wise for me, but it did set off a few light bulbs.

The best session of the day (and for me the whole conference), was Gwen Shapira’s  (from Pythian) talk on building an integrated data warehouse with Hadoop. Gwen did a superb job of explaining what Big Data is and what it isn’t.

Her simple, and straightforward, definition:

Big Data Defined

The “cheaply” part seems to be the key. Oracle, and other databases, can handle really HUGE amounts of data. Petabytes in fact. But putting all that data into an RDBMS can cost a lot more money than having it stored in a less sophisticated file system on commodity drives (like HDFS).

So just having lots of data in your warehouse does not mean you have Big Data, you just have a Very Large Data Warehouse (VLDW).

She went on to expand the definition:

Big Data Defined 2

This part shed even more light on Big Data for me. This really helped clarify even more when you might be dealing with Big Data.

The talk was filled with lots of technical details, limitations,  and tools ( Sqoop, Flume,  Fuse-DFS) you can look at for integrating Hadoop into Oracle. Of course there are Oracle’s offerings as well, like Oracle Loader for Hadoop and Oracle Direct Connector for HDFS.

Gwen also gave use several use case examples that illustrated when to use Hadoop. Bottom line – learn to use Hadoop appropriately, not just because it is cool. With tech we can:

Make the impossible, possible. That might no make the possible easy.

If you went to OOW, find and download Gwen’s slides. And follow her on twitter (@gwenshap).

It was Big Data day for me. My other session was  Ian Abramson’s session on Agile & Data. Two of my favorite topics.

Ian discussed the Agile Manifesto and Big Data and how he has been able to use agile techniques to make his projects successful.

To start, here is his simple definition on Big Data:

What is Big Data?

Ian had a nice picture of the overall architecture as well:

Another Big Data Picture

To be successful in applying agile to data projects, Ian has determined the projects must be driven by data value – that is the sprint priorities are set based on the data that can best help the customer achieve their goals. To stay on track and keep velocity, it is important to have daily touch-points with the team members as well. Ian does a daily stand-up for 15 minutes.

Ian shared lots of details and answered a lot of my annoying questions too. He came up with a great tree graphic to illustrate important factors in having a high performance project:

Agile Tree

Again, find and download the slides once Oracle uploads them. In the meantime, follow Ian on twitter (@iabramson). A data-centric agilest is hard to find. For more on agile and data warehousing check out my classic white paper on the subject.

After Ian’s session I got to go to my first Oracle blogger meet up. It was nice to put more faces to names. Thanks to Pythian and OTN for sponsoring it.

Blogger Meetup

Then back to the hotel to pack and then stand inline (for an hour!) to get to the appreciation event and see Pearl Jam live. It was a good concert. Hard to beat live music outdoors!

Huge crowd for Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam Live!

Well that’s it for me on OOW2012. I am back home in Houston now and heading into the office tomorrow. Then I need to write another abstract or two for KScope13 and RMOUG TD2013. Then it will be time to plan for OOW2013 and The America’s Cup finals…

Nap time.

Kent

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Warehouse, Oracle and tagged , , | Leave a comment
02 Oct 2012
2 Comments

Oracle OpenWorld Day 3

Another one for the books…

As before you can see a bunch of my activities on twitter (@kentgraziano and #oow). I posted a few pictures throughout the day.

For the first time I got to watch two keynotes live without being in the cavern of a hall for four hours. Actually sat outside in the shade in Yerba Buena Gardens and watched it all on a really big screen.

Lots of  “cloud” talk from Oracle and its partners. CEO Larry E did a cool presentation or real-time analytics on 4.9 billion tweets gathered for the 5 days following the summer Olympic games. It was quite interesting to see the analysis of structured and unstructured data together in a drillable dashboard environment.

And it was…you guessed it…all in the cloud.

Big Data meets Big Iron

Pretty good slogan…guess for doing big data analysis you will need some pretty hefty hardware too…

Also attended two of Jeff Smith’s (@thatJeffSmith) presentations. One on collaborative model development with SQL Developer Data Modeler (my personal favorite) and one on SQL Developer Tips and Tricks (mostly tips).

Source control in SDDM

I also got in the tail end of a session on Pluggable Databases (PDB). Got some really nice summary slides (be sure to click on them and zoom so you can read them). Lots of great details on how PDB works and what it can and cannot do.

All about pluggable database

 

The details on PDB

After the second keynote it was over to the OTN Lounge for the first ever Tweet Meet. It was designed to let people meet the person behind the twitter handle. I think it was a good success with a great turn out. We even got one of the OTN guys to create his own twitter account so he could follow the Oracle Aces and Ace Directors more easily.

Finally dinner in North Beach with some friends at the Stinking Rose. This has become an annual tradition.

After dinner I did manage to catch the last set from Joss Stone performing in Union Square. That pretty much rocked. Glad I went.

Tomorrow night the BIG appreciation event: Pearl Jam (if I remember to pick up my wristband to get in).

Kent

 

Posted in Data Modeling, Oracle, SQL Developer Data Modeler and tagged , , , , ,

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