Data Warehouse Leader to Reinvent Data Warehousing
August 26, 2009
“IBM Announces ‘Smart Analytics System’ Aimed at Reinventing Data Warehousing” reminded me of Einstein’s discomfort with some of the implications of his theory of relativity. Invent one thing, then scramble to find a way to deal with problems that won’t go away. IBM, one might assert, invented data warehousing. It was an IBM researcher who developed our old friend the relational database. The Codd approach has been the big dog in data management for a long time. Options are now becoming more widely available, but when one says, “Data warehousing”, I think IBM. That’s why I am an addled goose I suppose.
Mr. Data Warehouse. Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd
This article-interview makes clear that something is not right in IBM land. For me, the most suggestive comment in the Intelligent Enterprise write up was this passage:
Though IBM is promising better performance, a big part of the appeal seems to be targeted at executives who would favor contract simplicity and a single “throat to choke” over enterprising, but potentially riskier, in-house development, integration and innovation.
The “reinvention” seems to be to be little more than fixing responsibility for a mission critical system on a company big enough to take to court if the data warehouse has a leaking roof. In my experience these traditional data warehouses have more problems than a fast-build Shanghai apartment building.
My thought is to take a hard look at the assumptions about data warehousing, then poke into some options. Dare I suggest Aster Data? What about a Perfect Search enabled system?
Stephen Arnold, August 26, 2009
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