Can anyone share some experience as to how to test a data warehouse?

Information Management Online, March 7, 2008

Larissa Moss, Chuck Kelley

Question: Can anyone share some experience as to how to test a data warehouse? What kind of test cases needs to be written?
 
Larissa Moss’s Answer: The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) offers a wonderful course on data warehouse testing. Check out their conference and seminar schedules on TDWI’s Web site.

Chuck Kelley’s Answer: I think there is not much difference between test cases in transaction systems and data warehousing. You still need to exercise all the different branches of the code to make sure the expected results are indeed the results.

Larissa Moss is founder and president of Method Focus Inc., a company specializing in improving the quality of business information systems. She has more than 20 years of IT experience with information asset management. Moss is coauthor of three books: Data Warehouse Project Management (Addison-Wesley, 2000), Impossible Data Warehouse Situations (Addison-Wesley, 2002) and Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision- Support Applications (Addison-Wesley, 2003). Moss can be reached at methodfocus@earthlink.net.

Chuck Kelley is an internationally known expert in database and data warehousing technology. He has 30 years of experience in designing and implementing operational/production systems and data warehouses. Kelley has worked in some facet of the design and implementation phase of more than 50 data warehouses and data marts. He also teaches seminars, co-authored four books on data warehousing and has been published in many trade magazines on database technology, data warehousing and enterprise data strategies. He can be contacted at chuckkelley@usa.net.

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