As it is with building a house, most of the work necessary to build a data warehouse is neither visible nor obvious when looking at the completed product. While it may be easy to plan for a data warehouse that incorporates all the right concepts, taking the steps needed to create a warehouse that is as functional and user-friendly as it is theoretically sound, is not especially easy. That's the challenge that Building and Maintaininga Data Warehouse answers.

Based on a foundation of industry-accepted principles, this work provides an easy-to-follow approach that is cohesive and holistic. By offering the perspective of a successful data warehouse, as well as that of a failed one, this workdetails those factors that must be accomplished and those that are best avoided.

Organized to logically progress from more general to specific information, this valuable guide:

• Presents areas of a data warehouse individually and in sequence, showing how each piece becomes a working part of the whole
• Examines the concepts and principles that are at the foundation of every successful data warehouse
• Explains how to recognize and attend to problematic gaps in an established data warehouse
• Provides the big picture perspective that planners and executives require

Those considering the planning and creation of a data warehouse, as well as those who've already built one will profit greatly from the insights garnered by the author during his years of creating and gathering information on state-of-the-art data warehouses that are accessible, convenient, and reliable.