Interactive Data Warehousing Via the Web

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PREFACE: Preface
As technologies and industries converge, what is emerging is a new global information industry. There may not be cable or phone or computer companies, as such. There will be information conduits, information providers, information appliances, and information consumers.
Interactive Web-enabled and distributed computer systems will be of increasing importance in our society, especially from the desktop. In such systems, shared data may be the only thing that binds together different subsystems. Thus the key paradigms and concepts of distributing information over the large expanse of the enterprise should be associated with data considerations. Designing a data warehouse system so that the data required by its individual components, applications, and processes will be available when needed in the proper form, and with appropriate security, etc. is a substantial engineering task.
If the sharing or exchange of information plays a key role in data warehouse systems, then both communication and database issues are of great importance. Those issues extend far beyond the classical transport perspective of communications engineering and centralized databases. That trend is driven by ever-expanding technological capabilities, the desire of computer users to more fully integrate their information systems, the existence of heterogeneous systems that must pragmatically be evolved, not redone, and the certainty that in the foreseeable future users will continue to implement and introduce new systems that are not members of a homogeneous family.
Data warehousing technologies are the future way to accomplish Decision Support. Sooner or later, everyenterprise WILL implement a data warehouse solution. The question is NOT IF, BUT WHEN & HOW. The overriding architectural challenge is the development of an Internet or Intranet structure and framework that will permit heterogeneous data warehouse systems to work together.
Data warehouses come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small and trivial. Some are diverse and complex. Some span a single database, while others span the heterogeneous mix of the entire enterprise, across the boundary-less network. But whatever they may look like and whatever their complexity, data warehouses hold the promise to transform data into knowledge and help businesses compete. This book is about sharing knowledge from concepts to systematically building and implementing a data warehouse in Internet/Intranet environments.
This book exploits the World Wide Web technologies and the techniques essential for successful deployment of decision-support processing, in data warehouse environments. This book analyzes and discusses key issues such as construction of Intranets, distribution of functions over the enterprise, Web-enabled computing technologies, Web information flow across multiple systems, Object technologies and their inter-relationships, and more.
Acknowledgments
One of my English literature teachers, Pathak, taught me a lot about books and reading. He used to say that no one should invest time in reading a book until it has stood the test of a hundred years. I hope this book is an exception.
I acknowledge many debts: to Belen Balaba and to my many colleagues, for stray remarks that pushed me to complete this manuscript; to Mike Meehan, for painstaking scrutiny; to many data warehousing enthusiasts, vendors, and technologists, for providing much of the food for thought; and finally to my parents and children for their perseverance.

Harry Singh, Ph.D.

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