Posted by arlene

There are as many different tools as there are people to use them. Each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses, but also each tool is generally designed for a specific purpose. No one tool will do everything; certainly it will not do everything well. To help this discussion we can classify the usage of tools against a data warehouse into three broad categories.

• data dipping
• data mining
• data analysis

Each of these tool types is discussed below.

Data Dipping Tools

Data dipping tools are the basic business tools. They allow generation of standard business reports. They can perform basic analysis, answering standard business questions, such as: What were the sales last month? How many new customers have been added in the last week?

As these tools are relational they can also be used as data browsers, and generally have reasonable drill-down capabilities. Most of the tools will use metadata to isolate the user from the complexities of the data warehouse and present a business friendly schema.

Data Mining Tools

Data mining tools are specialist tools designed for finding trends and patterns in the underlying data. These tools use techniques such as artificial intelligence and neural networks to mine the data and find connections that may not be immediately obvious.

A data mining tool could be used to find common behavioral trends in a business’s customers, or to root out market segments by grouping customers with common attributes. Users of these tools will generally be analysts who already have a deep understanding of the business data.

The analysis thrown up by the data mining tool can be used to design new products and promotions, and to help improve customer loyalty.

Future Tools

The future heralds ever more powerful tools that are data warehouse aware—tools that are designed for and are capable of dealing with very large databases. Some of the features that will appear in tools in the near future are:

• optimizer-aware tools
• accurate query time prediction
• accurate resource usage prediction
• improved summary management
• improved integration of data generation, visualization and browsing

In the longer term, tools will arrive that can perform fully the roles of the query manager and the warehouse manager.

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