MS SQL Data Warehousing - UDM, Data Mart and Cube questions

Author

UDM, Data Mart and Cube questions

Joe

2006-10-25, 6:00 am

We have 3 Cubes rolled out into production on SQL 2005 - works great.

The methodolgy used was OLTP to Staging (3 different levels) and finally to
a Data Mart then the cube is created from the data mart. OLTP-->Staging
areas-->Data Mart-->Cubes

We are now gathering requirments for our 4th cube which meets the criteria
of using UDM instead.

I have some questions - I would greatly appreciate input from you folks on
any of these areas you could comment on:
1 - We don't have a data warehouse to speak of unless you consider the data
marts as such - is that correct? No reporting is done from the data marts
only the cubes - the data mart only has what it needs for the cubes

2 - It seems ok to mix and match methodolgies - so we could use the old
method OLTP-->Staging-->DM-->Cube for some and use UDM as OLTP-->UDM-->Cube
where possible - is this ok?

3 - What really is the difference between data marts and a data warehouse?

4 - We have a common Dimension that is shared between the three existing
Cubes called CLIENT - I will need that in the 4th cube - however; latency
will be an issue. UDM supports having the Cube processed near real-time or
more like hours or days - whereas our old cubes are updated monthly. Should
I consider re-doing the Client dimension using UDM to take full advanage of
all the feautres of UDM?

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