Author: Hans Michiels

Data Warehouse Automation Guide > Articles posted by Hans Michiels

Just a few words and photos about yesterday. Because yesterday it happened, the first event in the Netherlands with the subject "how to start with Data Warehouse Automation".   In the first part I gave a presentation on the subject from an objective perspective. Just tips and tricks to think of when you are considering to use any Data Warehouse Automation tool to speed up you data warehouse...

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Introduction Dan Linstedt, the inventor of Data Vault, has written a lot about it: hashkeys. For instance, one of his latest blog posts: #datavault 2.0, Hashes, one more time. I will not list all other sources, as you can use Google yourself. A few comments on hash keys: You need them for scalability. Using sequence numbers is taking the risk that your data warehouse does not scale well later when...

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For a long time I thought vendor lock-in was a bad thing. And still it can be. But my point of view has become a bit more subtle. Let me explain. Vendor lock-in, what is it? On Wikipedia you can read: “In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use...

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How can you compare data warehouse automation tools? And which one is "the best"? There was some arguing going on on Twitter, because Ajilius was comparing itself with Biml without much underlying "evidence". Edit 12 August 2017: Ron Dunn of Ajilius said this on LinkedIn, I will put it here as a rectification:"one of our resellers made the comparisons, we stepped in when things got out of...

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As promised .. .. I would still upload the slides from the presentation done at the TDWI conference. Of course the slides miss some context as not everything said is on them. Also important to know is that not all Venn-diagrams contain all tools, because the needed information was not provided. Well, here you can download: DWA_Tool_Selection_and_Classification_PDF If you have any questions, you can contact me! See the contact page for...

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Yesterday I went back home from Munich, the flight was with KLM with some drinks and food on a short flight without extra pay, just an honest and kind approach. Well done, #KLM #RespectAir. Some pictures from the presentation: I will upload the slides somewhere in the following days. Follow @dwaguide on Twitter and you will know when, or just come back here and see if they...

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Introduction As you might know, I started a survey on the usage and opinion about Data Warehouse Automation (DWA) Tools. Today I am presenting the results. I sincerely want to thank all the participants for sharing your thoughts. The participants First some insight into the persons that filled in the survey. You were not with so many (62 completed surveys). In statistics there is a formula to compute the minimum sample...

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Change log DateChanges 21 February, 2017Due to a very useful discussion on LinkedIn with Dan Linstedt, I have made some changes in this article to emphasize that a PSA does not have a permanent place in any EDW (with exception, as Dan suggests, being the Hadoop NoSQL platform used for slower storage mechanisms). Today I want to discuss the Persistent Staging Area in an Enterprise Data Warehouse, or PSA...

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Introduction I must admit I have a weakness for British humour. When I had to cope with leading zeros in business keys some time ago, I spontaneously came up with the title of this post, not knowing that it would serve as such. For those who do not know, "Meetings, bloody meetings" is a British comedy training film in which John Cleese plays a main role. It was...

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Introduction This weeks post is about the LoadDate and LoadEndDate. Actually there are two things to be nerdy on: End dating without gaps Getting the best value for bytes on DATETIME2 precision By the way, these topics apply to SQL Server, the examples are made using SQL Server 2014. 1. End dating without gaps How end dating works In a Data Vault Satellite, different subsequent versions of a row in the source...

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