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PREFACE:
Introduction
What does data warehousing have to do with e-commerce? Is this one book, or really two? Data warehousing is a means to an end; e-commerce is much more an end in itself. But with the ever-increasing importance of data in the digital economy, businesses more than ever need to do their very best in managing every last penny of value out of their digital resources—their data. Effective decision support requires effective data management. Data warehousing is an admittedly loosely defined set of techniques and technologies designed to manage data for effective decision support. These same technologies are quite adaptable to managing data assets for e-business.
Data has "come out of the closet." Prior to the widespread implementation of e-commerce, data management was "just" an internal challenge for businesses. Now the rush to the Internet is on, and businesses, in order to stake out a position in the digital marketplace, must expose the state of their data to customers, partners, and even competitors. Ready or not, this requires data integration, or at the very least, an appearance of data integration. Data warehousing technologies are fundamental enablers of data integration.
In some ways, this book is an information portal. Much of its content is available from other sources, but "content aggregation" is often a worthwhile task. Much content has been aggregated here with the hope that some value has been added along the chain from supplier to consumer. There are original thoughts here too, some of which have been simmering during a multi-decade journey through the sometimes fascinating landscape of commercialinformation technology. Then there are also opinions strewn about here and there ... watch out and step carefully.
Tiosa Corporation Enters the Digital Economy
Tiosa Corporation is a fictional company that we will use as an ongoing example and case study throughout this book. Tiosa is a mid-size firm that provides financial services to the energy and utility industry. It is currently poised at the brink of the digital marketplace on several fronts at once. As various facets of data warehousing and e-commerce are covered in the text, we will visit the offices of Tiosa Corp. to observe how this company confronts these issues as a result of embarking on a "digital strategy."
And away we go...