Database Reference
In-Depth Information
State of the Union
When I think about data warehouses, I am often reminded of this famous
Donald Rumsfeld quote:
“
There are known knowns
;
there are things we know that we know
.
There are known unknowns
;
that is to say
,
there are things that we now
know we don't know
.
But there are also unknown unknowns—there are
things we do not know we don't know
.”
In my mind, I compartmentalize this quote into
Table 10.1
.
Table 10.1
Compartmentalizing Data Warehousing
Known
Knowns
Known
Unknowns
Unknown
Unknowns
Reporting
Business
Intelligence
Analytics
Traditional data warehouses have been focused on historical analysis and
performance. In other words, we are looking back. At best, we get as far as
the
known unknowns
. The fact that we can model, shape, and organize the
data is evidence of the fact that we know what we are looking for. Although
this is helpful to operationally optimize a business process, it actually isn't
“intelligence” and it isn't transformative. It's not going to help us get close
to answering the
unknown unknowns
. In actuality, the very fact that we've
modeled the data may make it impossible, because in so doing we may have
lost subtle nuances in the data that only exist in its raw, most granular form.
However, the beauty of the new world of data warehousing and analytics
is that it is all about answering questions. In recent times, advances in
technology have enabled us to ask bigger, more exciting, interesting, and
open-endedquestions—inshort
big questions
.Thequestioniswhatputsthe
big
in big data. What's more, we can now answer those big questions.
