On The Subject Of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes && OLAP&….

On the subject of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes & OLAP….

I would like to speak frankly about Data Warehouses, Data Cubes and
OLAP (on-line analytical processing). Has it dawned on anyone else
that these buzz words were created by some geek who decided to take a
stab at marketing? Knowing that to the backwoods manager who knows
little of technology that new innovative names for old concepts would
help to sale their products.

I mean seriously, what is the story here? In a nut shell, and please
stop me if you disagree, but isn’t a data warehouse simply a
database? Can’t you do everything on a conventional database
like SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 that you can do on these new
proprietary Data Warehouse constructs? I mean who are they trying to
fool?

Take a look, for instance, at Data Cubes. Who hasn’t noticed
the striking similarity between data cubes and views used in all the
more robust databases? Also, what about OLAP? OLAP is nothing more
than a report generator. There’s nothing you can do with these
million dollar price tagged Data Warehouse total solution packages
that I can’t do with SQL Server, Oracle or DB2…for that
matter Microsoft Access.

As an example some sales people for Metadata Corporation has the Vice
President of I.T. in Nashville, for Healthspring, sold on their total
solution data respository which is such a scam. All they had to do
was throw a couple of buzzwords at him and they have him hypnotized.

Personally, I feel that these kinds of marketing practices undermine
our industry. It helps to unravel what little standards or
consistency we have. What do you guys think?

Stuart