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July 2001 - Volume 1, Issue 12

IN THIS ISSUE

  • Practical Data Administration – Part III   

    In previous articles we discussed possible exceptions to pure modeling rules. There are some rules that I think are more "etched in stone". I like to call them the 5 commandments of data administration.

  • The Business Intelligence Market: Strategic considerations during tough times   

    In the financial community today, there is clearly a bias against investing in the technology sector. Investors are concerned companies have not reaped material benefit from their IT investments over the last several years and future IT spending will at best remain flat as the economy contracts. The following article discusses the current state and outlook for the business intelligence (BI) software market, as well as technology trends and market share figures.

  • Questions Meta Data Can Answer   

    To manage data, information, and knowledge, companies need to know what data they have. Companies need to know precisely how their data is being used and how that data can be used to create competitive advantage. To know these things, a company needs to manage and use its meta data.

  • The Data Constraint to Successful Enterprise Integration   

    Without Data Integration, Enterprise Integration is extremely costly and overly complex. Many businesses are convinced that Business Intelligence, the Internet, and Customer Relationship Management are critical, strategic areas of investment, however most are struggling to deploy the enabling technologies. What are the constraints that prevent businesses from achieving these important goals? There are many obstacles to overcome, from proper organizational change management to maturing underlying technologies. The teams behind the implementation of these solutions frequently are able to harness the new technologies, and are capable of gaining organizational support. However, there is another critical constraint that must be overcome but all too frequently is not: the overwhelming task of integrating a set of otherwise disparate systems.

Letter From the Editor

by David Marco, President of Enterprise Warehousing Solutions, Inc.

Dear Readers,

A few weeks back Enterprise Warehousing Solutions, Inc. and Penn State University announced that we are in the process of co-developing a non-credit, certificate program on data warehousing and asked our RWDS readers to fill out a survey on this offering. First I'd like to thank everyone who took the time out of their day to respond and for the enthusiastic response that we received. Second, I promised that we would select one person to win a free copy of my book "Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository". The lucky winner is Joni Miller of H&R Block. Congratulations on winning the book!

In this issue we have a new regular column "Insights From The Analysts" Writing this column will be Frank Sparacino of First Analysis. Throughout the year Frank will be highlighting various business intelligence software vendors and market segments. I welcome Frank to the RWDS family.

Daniel Roth has donated our lead article "Practical Data Administration, Part III". This article is the third in this series (see RWDS issues #10 - #11 for parts one and two).

Andres Perez of USAA has provided a fine article on "The Data Constraint to Successful Enterprise Integration". This article marks Andres' first contribution for our newsletter.

Next, Bob Seiner, editor of The Data Administration Newsletter has provided an outstanding article on the "Questions That Meta Data Can Answer".

As a reminder, articles for our October, 2001 issue of Real-World Decision Support are due by September 11, 2001.

Calling All Writers

At RWDS we are always looking to publish new and informative, how-to articles. Our ever growing readership now totals over 26,000 registered readers and more than 30,000 unique visitors that visit the website during a new issue publication. Articles for RWDS can cover any topic in decision support, business intelligence, knowledge management, or information technology (IT) in general. Below is a brief list of possible topics:

  • Architecture
  • Best Practices
  • Conducting Tool Evaluations
  • Data Marts
  • Data Modeling
  • Data Warehousing
  • e-Business
  • Industry Standards
  • Meta Data
  • Operational Data Stores
  • Project Management
  • Staffing
  • UML
  • Unstructured Data
  • "War" stories from the field
  • XML, Etc.

Don't miss this opportunity to join the ranks of "those that write". If you would like to publish an article in Real-World Decision Support please send an email to MReed@EWSolutions.com and make sure to read our article guidelines at http://www.EWSolutions.com/

Please feel free to send all comments and questions on how we can improve Real-World Decision Support to ARiley@EWSolutions.com

This newsletter is published quarterly (January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, & October 1st) and is dedicated to providing informative, real-world solutions to the challenges of implementing decision support systems, e-business solutions, XML, and meta data repositories.

To offer feedback and suggestions on Real-World Decision Support, please contact us at: admin@EWSolutions.com