Data warehousing
January 2011
Building the Unstructured Data Warehouse
Architecture, Analysis & Design
by Bill Inmon, Krish Krishnan
Learn essential techniques from data warehouse legend Bill Inmon on how to build the reporting environment your business needs now!Answers for many valuable business questions hide in text. How well can your existing reporting environment extract the necessary text from email, spreadsheets, and documents, and put it in a useful format for analytics and reporting? Transforming the traditional data warehouse into an efficient unstructured data warehouse requires additional skills from the analyst, architect, designer, and developer. This book will prepare you to successfully implement an unstructured data warehouse and, through clear explanations, examples, and case studies, you will learn new techniques and tips to successfully obtain and analyze text.Master these ten objectives:Build an unstructured data warehouse using the 11-step approachIntegrate text and describe it in terms of homogeneity, relevance, medium, volume, and structureOvercome challenges including blather, the Tower of Babel, and lack of natural relationshipsAvoid the Data Junkyard and combat the Spider's WebReuse techniques perfected in the traditional data warehouse and Data Warehouse 2.0,including iterative developmentApply essential techniques for textual Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) such as phrase recognition, stop word filtering, and synonym replacementDesign the Document Inventory system and link unstructured text to structured dataLeverage indexes for efficient text analysis and taxonomies for useful external categorizationManage large volumes of data using advanced techniques such as backward pointersEvaluate technology choices suitable for unstructured data processing, such as data warehouse appliancesThe following outline briefly describes each chapter's content:Chapter 1 defines unstructured data and explains why text is the main focus of this book.Chapter 2 addresses the challenges one faces when managing unstructured data.Chapter 3 discusses the DW 2.0 architecture, which leads into the role of the unstructured data warehouse. The unstructured data warehouse is defined and benefits are given. There are several features of the conventional data warehouse that can be leveraged for the unstructured data warehouse, including ETL processing, textual integration, and iterative development. Chapter 4 focuses on the heart of the unstructured data warehouse: Textual Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL).Chapter 5 describes the 11 steps required to develop the unstructured data warehouse.Chapter 6 describes how to inventory documents for maximum analysis value, as well as link the unstructured text to structured data for even greater value.Chapter 7 goes through each of the different types of indexes necessary to make text analysis efficient. Indexes range from simple indexes, which are fast to create and are good if the analyst really knows what needs to be analyzed before the indexing process begins, to complex combined indexes, which can be made up of any and all of the other kinds of indexes.Chapter 8 explains taxonomies and how they can be used within the unstructured data warehouse.Chapter 9 explains ways of coping with large amounts of unstructured data. Techniques such as keeping the unstructured data at its source and using backward pointers are discussed. The chapter explains why iterative development is so important.Chapter 10 focuses on challenges and some technology choices that are suitable for unstructured data processing. In addition, the data warehouse appliance is discussed.Chapters 11, 12, and 13 put all of the previously discussed techniques and approaches in context through three case studies. About Bill Bill Inmon, the father of data warehousing, has written 52 books translated into 9 languages. Bill has written over 1000 articles and conducted seminars and spoken at conferences on every continent except Antarctica. Bill holds three software patents and his latest company is Forest Rim Technology, a company dedicated to the access and integration of unstructured data into the structured world. About Krish Krish Krishnan is a recognized thought leader in Data Warehouse Performance and Architecture. Krish writes and teaches Social Intelligence across the world and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He provides consulting advice to CxO's on DW Strategy and is an Independent Analyst covering the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Industry.
