Tom Haughey is the president of InfoModel LLC, a training and consulting company specializing in data warehousing and data management. He has worked on dozens of database and data warehouse projects for more than two decades. Haughey was former CTO for Pepsi Bottling Group and director of enterprise data warehousing for PepsiCo. He may be reached at (201) 337-9094 or via e-mail at tom.haughey@InfoModelUSA.com.

Bridging: Solving Many-to-Many Relationships in the Dimensional Model
September 10, 2008 This article will take a closer look at the M:M in a dimensional model.

Are there best practices or tools for creating a data dictionary?
November 28, 2007 Take a look at "Business Metadata," by William Inmon, Bonnie O’Neil and Lowell Fryman. Also look at Dave Marco’s...

Is there a good book for BI project management that you would recommend?
November 28, 2007 Very soon there will be a very good book for Agile BI PM. I am hoping to publish it in the fall of 2008.

Where is the best place for a BI application to reside?
November 28, 2007 There are different kinds of BI applications. Some BI applications are data marts. A data mart is defined as an environment...

Are you aware of off-the-shelf operational data store solutions?
November 28, 2007 The only packaged ODSs I know of are part of major ERP products like SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, etc.

Should the metadata layer that sits between the data marts and the query/reporting tools be owned by the business or IT?
November 28, 2007 It depends on what is meant by “owned.” IT should provide the metadata repository along with the rules about who can...

What are your views on the advantages and/or disadvantages ETL tools and data modeling versus code?
November 28, 2007 Data modeling tools are inexpensive and writing code to provide the same function is pointless. You have too much work to do...

Could you please supply a definition for "exploration data mart?"
March 1, 2007

Ask the Experts
July 28, 2006 How can we meet all end-user requests for the enterprise data warehouse?

In a data warehousing project, which way is the best to store data in database?
July 10, 2006

Ask the Experts
June 30, 2006 In order to implement aggregate awareness, what are the precautions to be taken?

Ask the Experts
June 23, 2006 Any Tips on Designing a Sales Data Mart for a Retail Company?

Should the size of a company affect the need for a decision support system, a data warehouse, and an expert system to improve its sales figures and profitability?
June 13, 2006

Can you help me with some resources to prepare a standard approach for requirements definition and analysis for BI projects?
June 13, 2006

Why can't you experts agree on terminology?
June 13, 2006

What is the relationship between the data warehouse and the enterprise resource planning system?
June 13, 2006

Ask the Experts
May 26, 2006 What is the current state of data warehousing and data mining?

What are the different data staging techniques?
May 25, 2006

In order to implement aggregate awareness, what are the precautions to be taken?
May 25, 2006

Could you please provide tips on getting tables into our data mart?
May 25, 2006

Ask the Experts
May 12, 2006 Today's question: What would you recommend for a method to set up a central business intelligence competence center in an...

What should we provide as support for BI development and customized reports in the insurance industry?
May 11, 2006

Do you feel that knowledge made available through the use of data warehouses should be disseminated to all employees in the organization?
May 11, 2006

Should we load null values into the data warehouse?
May 11, 2006

Can we have data marts which have the same structure but at different locations?
May 11, 2006

When modeling a new data warehouse, Do I put each hierarchy into one table, or do I break each hierarchy into separate tables?
May 11, 2006

When is the appropriate time to load stored procedures?
May 11, 2006

Ask the Experts
May 5, 2006

Ask the Experts
April 21, 2006 Should the operational data store be designed using 3NF approach or a dimensional approach? What is the best design approach...

How do star schemas compare to snowflake schemas?
April 10, 2006

What is the best solution for a data capture issue, where the source tables don't have proper timestamp capture for the updates?
April 10, 2006

Should the operational data store be designed using 3NF approach or a dimensional approach?
April 10, 2006

Are open sources capable of handling huge volume of data?
April 10, 2006

Ask the Experts
April 7, 2006 This is a sample of the questions asked of and answered by our illustrious panel of experts.

After almost completing the first iteration of our data warehouse base facts and dimensions, is it reasonable to convert to an ETL tool instead of using templates to assure consistency and accuracy?
March 5, 2006

What is an effective way of recouping the running costs of the data warehouse from the business users, without impacting usage of the DW?
March 5, 2006

What method would you recommend to set up a central business intelligence competence center?
February 7, 2006

How would you generate a report that shows non-events in a fact table?
February 7, 2006

What activities need to be done in capacity planning for a data warehouse consolidation project?
February 7, 2006

What roadmap should I use for an insurance system data warehouse?
January 3, 2006

How does data warehousing apply to machine monitoring information?
January 3, 2006

What is the relevance of a work breakdown structure in a data warehouse project?
January 3, 2006

Is there any database management system which supports temporal databases?
January 3, 2006

Can you provide any cases on data warehouse and dashboard solutions?
December 12, 2005

What standard/guidelines should be implemented in the transactional systems to make the data business intelligence ready?
December 12, 2005

What are the advantages of ETL tools over Pl/SQL loaders?
December 12, 2005

Which tools would you suggest to load data in near real time in a Siebel database?
December 12, 2005

How do you deal with special problems that arise during group requirements collection sessions?
December 12, 2005

What is the most appropriate schema architecture for a data warehouse with downstream dependent data marts?
December 12, 2005

How should I research user experiences before implementing a DW?
December 9, 2005

Is Dimensional Modeling One of the Great Con Jobs in Data Management History?
April 1, 2004 In Part 1 of this article, Haughey established some basic and essential definitions for analytical modeling. In this second...

Is Dimensional Modeling One of the Great Con Jobs in Data Management History? Part 1
March 1, 2004 This article reexamines the concept of data design for analytical systems such as the date warehouse. It takes a close...

Data Warehouse Architectures in an Internet Age
February 13, 2004 Here are some basic principles to consider if you are designing a data warehouse.