The Data Warrior

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Archive for the tag “#WWDVC”

02 Feb 2015
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Better Data Modeling: The Data Warrior Speaks 2015

Great news, I have confirmed three major events, and one local event so far this year where you can come out and hear me speak about some of my favorite topics: #DataModeling, #SQLDevModeler, and #DataVault.

So, line up your training budget and get registered for at least one of these great events.

DAMA Houston

My first talk for the year will be local – downtown Houston. I will present an Introduction to Data Vault Modeling for the Houston Chapter of DAMA International (next week!).

When: 10-Feb-2015
Time: 1pm – 4:30pm
Where: Chevron Building, Rio Grande Room – 51st floor, 1600 Smith, Houston, TX 77002

If you plan to attend, please RSVP directly to stephen.pace@kalido.com.

RMOUG Training Days 2015

Held every year at the Denver Convention Center in mid-February, The Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group Training Days is the best value around for user group events – low cost ($395- $455), great locations (Denver!), and excellent speaker lineup (international speakers, Oracle ACE and ACE Directors).

I will be speaking both Wednesday, February 18, and Thursday, February 19 (last session!). My topics this year will be an Introduction to SQL Developer Data Modeler, and Worst Practices in Data Warehouse Design.

Plus I will be leading Morning Chi Gung exercises at 7 AM both days to get you all warmed up for a great day of learning. Check the entire agenda here.

As a bonus there are some excellent deep dive sessions on Tuesday, February 17th that are not to be missed, so get there early.

New this year will be Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings during lunch on Wednesday. I will be co-leading one on Data Integration & Data Warehousing with Bobby Curtis.

So, lots to do see and learn. Sign up today (and bring your ski equipment for the weekend after).

2nd Annual World Wide Data Vault Consortium

WWDVC was so successful last year, that Dan decided to do it again. This year there is even a new cool website for the event, which will be held May 28-30 in Stowe, Vermont at the Trapp Family Lodge. This will be a small event (less than 60 people), with a single track so you won’t have to decide which talk to attend.

Yes, the hills will be alive with the sounds of Data Vault geeks from around the world telling their tales of trials, tribulations, and success as they try to implement large, agile, enterprise data warehouse programs across many industries. Topics include:

  • Big Data, NoSQL
  • Virtualization of Data Marts
  • Data Vault 2.0 & Agility
  • Changing roles of Data Modeling
  • Managed Self-Service BI

The speaker lineup is a who’s-who of the data warehouse and agile world.

Special guests this year include a keynote from Claudia Imhoff, Dan Linstedt,  and newest addition Scott Ambler (one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto).

I will be there again, giving two talks with my buddy from McKesson, Keith Hoyle. We will discuss Data Warehousing in the Real World and talk about our endeavors to develop Virtualized Hybrid Type 1-2 Dimensions to enable Extreme BI.

Don’t miss this chance to rub elbows and network with the top innovators and thinkers in the data warehouse and BI space. Sign up soon as there are limited slots and limited rooms at the inn.

ODTUG KScope15

Another amazing annual event, this user group gathering will be a veritable who’s-who in the Oracle community. Again you will find Oracle ACEs and ACE Directors, as well as Oracle Product Managers, all ready and willing to discuss the latest and greatest tools for doing Oracle development work. Check out the amazing list of talks and presenters.

This year it is back to the beach for KScope. It will be held June 21-25 at the Diplomat Resort and Spa on the beach in Hollywood, Florida.

By popular demand, the last day of the conference will be all Deep Dive sessions, so be sure to plan your travel to hang out until the end (and then enjoy the beach!).

I will be giving two talks during the week (same ones as at RMOUG), answering questions on a panel or two, and again running my annual Morning Chi Gung sessions every morning (but this year outside on the beach).

This should be a very educational and relaxing event as it is every year. And it is in a family-friendly location so bring the gang along.  You can register today and still get a huge early registration discount.

So what are you  waiting for?

See you soon!

Kent

The Data Warrior

P.S. While at these events I do expect to have some limited free time, so if you would like some one-on-one coaching in person, contact me directly at kent <dot> graziano <at> att <dot> net to set up a session.

 

Posted in Chi Gung, Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse, Oracle, SQL Developer Data Modeler, User Groups and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
28 May 2014
1 Comment

Better Data Modeling: #DataVault 2.0 Virtualising your Data Vault – Satellites

Guest Blog Link: Virtualising your Data Vault – Satellites

This is a MUST READ for anyone wanting to get Agile in their DW/BI program and for anyone doing Data Vault 2.0.

Actually anyone doing Data Vault 1.0 can benefit from the technique as well.

Roelant Vos has done quite a bit on trying to virtualize and automate data warehouses using DV 2.0 (especially since the WWDVC in Vermont.). Please check out his blog and follow him on twitter too.

Cheers

Kent

The Oracle Data Warrior

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse and tagged , , , , ,
23 Mar 2014
2 Comments

Live from the 1st Annual World Wide Data Vault Consortium: Day 3

Well it was the last day of the 1st annual WWDVC. What an event is has been. (See recap of Day 1 and Day 2, here and here)

The sign outside the meeting room

The sign outside the meeting room

Don’t forget you can see all the action by searching on #WWDVC on twitter.

Agility and Data Vault

Long time data vault advocate Tom Breur opened our closing day with a talk about how we should strive to build the right product and build it right without creating more technical debt in the process.

He said agile is about taking small steps not about being faster. If we do this right, the solution we deliver should generate more legitimate business requirements.

He encouraged us all to read the Theory of Constraints and The Goal (I have), and to learn about lean delivery. Our goal should be to deliver continuously and consistently. The shorter the sprint, the better.

Next he went on to tell us his conclusion that while building a Kimball based solution may appear to deliver more value to the business, it takes too long. And in the end it is a fragile and rigid solution subject to major re-work when requirements change after deployment.

We can deliver value, quicker, using the data vault method. And what we deliver can be done incrementally and more easily added to without re-work.

Tom drew this to show how much quicker we can deliver some value sooner

Tom drew this to show how much quicker we can deliver some value sooner

Data Vault Case Studies

John Sells and Josh Bartells from Data Blueprint shared with us their experiences implementing data vault solutions for their clients.

John and Josh several successful DV projects

John and Josh share several successful DV projects

Why Data Blueprint decided to use DV as their consulting

Why Data Blueprint decided to use DV as their consulting

The gujys from DataBlueprint discuss hurdles and objections they encountered selling DV to clients

The guys from DataBlueprint discuss hurdles and objections they encountered selling DV to clients

It was great to hear about their success stories from the field and see how they addressed the challenges many of us have faced.

Data Vault Modeling Tool

MID GmbH from Germany has a pretty nice modeling tool with built in capabilities to support modeling a data vault solution from stage tables through reporting (including using the new DV icons).

Nice ability to visually show relationships across diagram types

Nice ability to visually show relationships across diagram types

MID's modeler has nice diagram to show all sorts of metadata relationships

MID’s modeler has nice diagram to show all sorts of metadata relationships

This is a tool worth checking out if you are doing a lot of data vault modeling.

Concluding Remarks

Dan closed out this inaugural event with a few remarks, some memories, thanks, and talk about plans for doing this again next year.

Dan closes out the 1st Annual WWDVC and asks about next year - where and when?

Dan closes out the 1st Annual WWDVC and asks about next year – where and when?

Guess I need to be careful what I say! :-)

Guess I need to be careful what I say! 🙂

One last time I have to say I am glad I came and can’t wait to do it again next year!

Snowy St Albans

Snowy St Albans

So long for now from Vermont.

Don’t forget to check out LearnDataVault.com and get ready to join us next year!

Kent

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse and tagged , , , , , , ,
22 Mar 2014
4 Comments

Live from the 1st Annual World Wide Data Vault Consortium: Day 2

Wow has is been an amazing event with many amazing people from around the globe. I am VERY glad that I took the time and came to St Albans for this inaugural event.

As with Day 1, there is just too much great information for me to adequately cover it in a blog post (or 10!), so I will give you some highlights and lots of pictures.

The good news is that sometime in the next few months you will be able to purchase access to a video of the entire event on LearnDataVault (then you will be really bummed about not having come in person). Dan and Sanjay figure with their schedules it will take a few months to produce a top quality video. The good news is we had professional videographers for all three days and they filmed every keynote and every talk.

I will let you know when the video is ready.

Dan Does a Deep Dive on Data Vault 2.0

Due to popular demand, Dan actually changed the agenda and made the first session of Day 2 a detailed look at some of the more important aspects of Data Vault 2.0. This is material that he has not really written much about and is only available otherwise in his DV 2.0 bootcamp class.

Here are some of the highlights (again to see even more details check #WWDVC on twitter).

Opposing goals between DW storage and Mart presentation have led to many failed DW/BI projects.

Opposing goals between DW storage and Mart presentation have led to many failed DW/BI projects.

BTW – Dan would like to see us stop calling the reporting side “Data Marts” and start calling them “Information Marts”. To be agile we have to stop mixing the raw data storage (EDW) with the reporting that has applied business rules.

Dan went on a bit of a rant about the need to measure things.

DV 2.0 Methodology helps us be more precise to be more successful

DV 2.0 Methodology helps us be more precise to be more successful

Then we had a discussion about DV 2.0 architecture and methodology and how it supports and fits into the knowledge pyramid.

Dan introduces us to DV 2.0 and the Knowledge Pyramid

Dan introduces us to DV 2.0 and the Knowledge Pyramid

The DV 2.0 Architecture

The DV 2.0 Architecture

The some discussion about DV 2.0 agility backed up by a real user case study.

A DV success at Qsuper

A DV success at Qsuper

It sure was great to see real numbers on a DV 2.0 success story!

So how did they do it? Dan then showed us his recommended approach to requirements gathering that helps the process become more agile.

DV 2.0 approach to getting better requirements faster

DV 2.0 approach to getting better requirements faster

Then finally another rant about how to get better performance from our systems.

Dan's Rules of Performance

Dan’s Rules of Performance

Roelant Vos (Analytics8) talks about DV Automation

Characteristics of ETL for Data Vault

Characteristics of ETL for Data Vault

Roelant Vos discusses generating Data Vault ETL from meta data

Roelant Vos discusses generating Data Vault ETL from meta data

Roelant uses Lego as a great analogy for the patterns in Data Vault and why it is possible to auto-create ETL code.

Model driven ETL generation is possible

Model driven ETL generation is possible

What is needed to support generation of ETL

What is needed to support generation of ETL

With all this in mind, Roelant has built a nice little kit to actually generate DV ETL code for his clients. Nice job! You can follow Roelant on twitter here.

Doug Needham (ClearMeasure) blows our minds with Data Vault Math.

There were a ton of tweets about this session. Doug has done some incredibly innovative work on using mathematics to determine the quality/completeness of a data vault model and some slick ways to validate that it has been loaded correctly. Lots of talk about graph theory and calculating edges ensued.

Doug blows our minds with math

Doug blows our minds with math

Research on how to determine the driving key for a Link

Research on how to determine the driving key for a Link

More calculations from Doug - vector math!

More calculations from Doug – vector math!

This is the first time I have met Doug, a former marine corp DBA. We have found we have a lot of experiences and thoughts in common, including a common client! He even grew up in Texas in the town where I now live!

In this session Doug famously said “If you do not know what a hypothesis, control group or A/B test is, you are NOT a data scientist.”

One of the great things about these event is the people you meet. I am glad to have met Doug.

Using Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler for DV

After a much needed brain break from Doug’s talk and some networking time, I got to take the floor again to show my favorite FREE data modeling tool. I did my usual top 10 type talk but with a slant towards how I leverage all those features to support a data vault modeling project.

Data Vault Diversity: The former Marine mathematician and the long haired enviromentalist

Data Vault Diversity: The former Marine mathematician and the long haired environmentalist

There were lots of good questions and interaction and lots of interest in how I have built virtual data marts on top of data vault warehouses.

Starting my SDDM intro talk

Starting my SDDM intro talk

And that was it for Day 2. We all took a break then had a happy hour and dinner (with demo) sponsored by AnalytixDS. Good food and good fun!

Data Vault geeks from around the world in snowy St Albans, Vermont

Data Vault geeks from around the world in snowy St Albans, Vermont

More to come on Day 3!

Kent

Posted in Data Modeling, Data Vault, Data Warehouse, SQL Developer Data Modeler and tagged , , , , , ,

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