Welcome to the next installment of Data Vault Modeling and Methodology.  In this entry I will attempt to address the comment I received on the last entry surrounding Data Vault and Master Data.  I will continue posting as much information as I can to help spread the knowledge for those of you still questioning and considering the Data Vault.  I will also try to share more success stories as we go, as much of my industry knowledge has been accrued in the field - actually building systems that have turned in to successes over the years.

Ok, let's discuss the health-care provider space, conceptually managed data and master data sets, and a few other things along the way.

Most of you by now have heard the words: "Data Vault".  When you run it through your favorite search engine you get all kinds of different hits/definitions.  No surprise.  So what is it that I'm referring to when I discuss "Data Vault" with BI and EDW audiences?

This entry will try to answer such basic questions, just to provide a foundation of knowledge with which to build your fact finding on.

There are many things that come to mind when reading the title of this entry, it's a HUGE space with even larger prospects - from the app servers to the databases, from the tips of BI reporting all the way to ethics, security and privacy laws....  And then there's the dreaded: "What if the company supporting my current cloud apps & data fails?"

Hmm, in this entry we will explore the tip of the iceberg as it were, and explore some of the notions to consider when looking at Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing in the cloud...  Why? Because the CLOUD is big, and getting bigger - and because it IS a central and important part of technology evolution in 2010.

Recently I made a key-note presentation at Array Communications conference in the Netherlands.  There were 50 people in the room, and it was a good crowd.  There are quite a few shifts occurring in the EDW/BI market space, and there are some reasons why changes are happening.  Game changing technology is coming to the market in ETL, services, hardware, databases, and applications.

Ok folks, I'm back.  I've spent the last six months reading, writing (and arithmetic - that's a joke... ha-ha...)  seriously, implementing solutions, visiting customer sites, and seeing what's going on in the world; and to that end, the DW/BI world is changing.  You've seen me write about this before, but now it's on-top of your head.

Like it or not...  Your Data Warehouse IS a System Of Record, and if it isn't in 2009, it WILL BE before the end of 2010.  So what does that mean?

There are many trends afoot in the industry, but I think there are two or three that are here to stay, and quite frankly, they will make a huge impact on the way BI/EDW is done.  Some of the technologies that are ground-shaking and game-changing include Solid State Disk, Database appliances on the Cloud, and data services on the cloud.  I've been watching the Database market now for several years, and here are a few of my predictions for 2010.

If you've started a Master Data project, or you are working with Metadata at the business levels, then you probably are familiar with the need for ontological classification of terms.  If you aren't familiar with Ontologies (at an entry level), then I would say that you will have a tough time putting together successful MDM or Master Metadata components for your EDW/BI solution.

There are quite a few vendors out there who publish industry logical data models.  I've had my fare share of direct, hands-on experience with them over the last 8 to 10 years.  In this entry I will share a few of the pros and cons of these classifications of models. My objective is more of an inquisitive one, in hopes that you will respond with your experiences, and if you are a vendor: please post your opinions.

The market has been asking for EDW's to deal with more and more real-time based data.  IT on the other hand has become "slower and less agile" as their current system of federated data marts gets larger and larger.  In this entry we will deal with some of the issues, some of the questions, and of course offer an opinion into the insight of dealing with true real-time data sets arriving at the doorstep of the EDW.

I've always felt that this blog (with the agreement from Bill Inmon, Shawn Rogers, and Ron Powell) is a place for me to express my guarded, guided, and best possible opinion about vendors, the industry, industry direction.  I've also long believed that vendors DO HAVE GREAT PRODUCTS, but sometimes their marketing and sales campaigns get a little over-zelous and advertise "features" that simply arent' quite true, or that the product doesn't behave in the situations they claim it does.

Recently however, I've been getting "flack" from certain areas of the industry because some of the vendors who read my blog don't like what I'm saying.  They are exerting indirect pressure on my friends and industry affiliations to "disconnect me, take me off the map." Claiming I have no right to share my information on this blog, and questioning if I should even be an industry analyst in the first place.

This entry is a question to all my readers (vendors included), and I hope you will respond with your thoughts and comments.