For a certain crowd of data devotees, information fanatics, and statistics aficionados,
late October in North America becomes something approaching paradise.
That’s because the continent’s four most popular professional sports leagues
Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball
Association, and the National Hockey League-are either in season or finishing
postseason play.
What do sports have to do with data management? Everything. Sports organizations
and fans! have discovered that the flood of data produced by each game
can be collected, mined, and analyzed-generating information and insight that
can be used to win championships. Where a discussion of star athletes might
once have started and ended with the number of points scored or prevented,
today even casual fans compare teams and players by using complex formulas
that describe everything from defensive range to situational performance.
Change "free-throw average" or "on-base percentage" to "seasonally adjusted
sales growth" or "average revenue per unit," and it's easy to see that businesses have
made the same discovery. For companies looking for an edge in the global marketplace,
business intelligence and predictive analytics are no longer a luxury,
they're a necessity.
In this issue of IBM Data Management magazine, we delve into the source
from which all BI and analytics flow: the data warehouse. Whether you already
have a data warehouse or are considering building one, start with our cover story,
which examines the five business and technical trends that will shape your data
warehouse strategy. Stop by the Data Manager column, where Merv Adrian brings
us the story of a midsized company's experience starting up a data warehouse
using pre-rolled data models. And don't miss our look at the data warehousing
challenges faced by public sector organizations.
Let's get our hands dirty! Bonnie Baker is back this issue with ways to boost
performance by eliminating unnecessary DB2 connections, while Matthias Nicola
joins us from the IBM Silicon Valley Lab with a look at customizing XML storage
in DB2.
Of course, there's another reason why late October is a big time for data professionals:
the IBM Information On Demand 2009 Global Conference. This year, it's
happening October 25-29 in Las Vegas. We hope that you're able to attend, but if
not, it's never too early to start making plans for next year. And as always, we want
to hear from you at editor@tdagroup.com.
Thanks for reading, Cameron Crotty Editor IBM Data Management
