Packaged Data Model: A Gift for Warehouse Developers

How can resellers build data warehouses that provide flexible data collection, create multidimensional representations of data, and allow for future customizations? For many resellers, the answer is data models, well-structured repositories of metadata that govern the collection and representation of data.

If you think metadata automatically means long hours of custom development, think again. One reseller, Applied Data Resource Management (ADRM), found that packaged software can ease the development burden. ADRM's enterprise templates, created wi th Computer Systems Advisors' SilverRun data-modeling tools, were a big time-saver for Integrated Device Technology (IDT).

To kick off its data-warehouse design efforts, IDT bought some ADRM models and the SilverRun Business Process Modeling Tool, Relational Data Modeler, and Entity Relationship Expert. The SilverRun tools help warehouse managers tailor the ADRM templates and make changes as the warehouse evolves." The templates gave us a head start modeling standard business processes, such as sales tracking and lead qualification," says Mike Thompson, MIS manager at IDT.

Larry Heinrich, ADRM's president, says a typical enterprise-wide analysis and planning process takes two to three years and can cost as much as $5 million. The bulk of that baseline effort for a specific industry can be replaced by an ADRM template. "Companies operating in the same industry tend to require the same data related in similar ways," Heinrich says.

Each industry-specific data environment, consisting of up to 25 integrated-data models, provides th e data platform on which an organization can launch its data-warehouse projects.

It worked for IDT. "The flexible design of these data models allowed us to hit the ground running," Thompson says. "Rather than building a data model from scratch, we could focus our efforts on the requirements that make our warehouse unique."