The environment of a data warehouse differs from typical information systems and software projects – it is a combination of systems oriented toward data and implementing primarily integration and reporting logic.

With all of its diversity, it is primarily a complex software component. We encounter failures of basic processes belonging to software development in the environment of data warehouses more often than anywhere else. 

Configuration management

Configuration management is a necessity for rapid adaptation to business requirements and for ensuring faultless operation of the data warehouse. If the configuration units are not identified, or if it is not clear what constitutes the version of the data warehouse, there is an increased risk of serious errors in operation.

Architecture and design

Architecture and design determine the possibility of future growth and expansion of the data warehouse. A range of data warehouses have been created through the gradual bundling of new functionalities to a core, which was originally created as a fast prototype. This process leads to a lack of maintainability and expandability of the data warehouse and ends with the necessity of building a new system on a greenfield.

Testing, validation and verification

The omission of testing, validation and verification results in unreliability of information in the data-warehouse output, whose realisation is extremely complicated in an environment of continual change management and parallel projects. Regression testing is particularly underappreciated.

How to get started with profinit?

Profinit approaches data-warehouse projects from the standpoint of its own software process. We offer you an analysis of existing processes used in the development, maintenance and operation of a data warehouse and compare them with the standard software process. Based on this analysis, and in cooperation with the customer, we propose the introduction of new processes or changes in the existing ones.

In the past, we have helped customers in the following situations:

• introduction of DW development and administration processes
• introduction of automated tests in the data warehouse
• introduction of an issue tracking system
• introduction of configuration management
• review of ETL architecture