POST CONFERENCE FULL DAY TUTORIALS • 2 November 2006

Practical Metadata Strategies
Peter Aiken, VCU/Data Blueprint

Our surveys show that management typically does not understand the need to manage metadata. Consequently, today's metadata initiatives must deliver immediate ROI to retain management commitment. This seminar demonstrates how organizations have rapidly and successfully started gained value from metadata projects in today's environment. Success is achieved by applying metadata strategies and concentrating on the fundamentals. Upon completion, delegates will be able to get started with metadata and making rapid progress in today's environment by articulating and implementing metadata projects that will reduce integration costs and increase information asset quality and utility.

• Understand the basic theories/guidance used to leverage metadata into existing/planned DM solutions – insight into the practical and effective;
• Comprehend the many complimentary characteristics between metadata and data management practices;
• Grasp the general utility to be gained from various metadata repository solutions and technologies;
• Appreciate the many ways that the XML component architecture can be used to compliment metadata implementation efforts;
• Assess and articulate the business value of proposed metadata projects.

Featured Speaker:

Peter Aiken VCU/Data Blueprint

Leading Change: Toolkit for the Information Quality Professional
C. Lwanga Yonke, Aera Energy LLC

Effective change leadership is often the differentiator between successful information quality initiatives and less successful ones. This tutorial will provide helpful perspectives, frameworks and tools that information and data quality professionals can use to lead large or small change projects.

Drawing from lessons learned at the frontline, this interactive tutorial goes beyond classical change management concepts to include best practices from marketing and human psychology. Participants will learn:

• The peculiar characteristics of data that increase the complexity of information quality change projects
• The critical success factors of successful change
• How to understand and manage personal and organizational transitions
• The elements of successful change communication throughout the change lifecycle

Featured Speaker:

C. Lwanga Yonke Aera Energy LLC

Advanced Dimensional Modeling
Tom Haughey, InfoModel LLC

This presentation is for experienced data warehouse architects and database designers. The presentation will describe the most challenging data warehouse design problems the world of data warehousing has faced. Among these requirements are: handling aggregation, heterogeneous product and transaction types, handling time and history, handling changing dimensions, handling late arriving data, supporting data with different rates of change and stability, supporting large scale database environments such as MPP (massively parallel processing).

Designing a data warehouse requires different roles and uses of data, a different use of normalization, and new modeling constructs. Key special requirements of the data warehouse focus on time, location, and dimensional aspects of data. These requirements are among the reasons that analytical data modeling demands different skills, perspectives and techniques.

• Data warehouse architectures
• New view of dimensional modeling
• Required snowflakes
• Conforming facts and dimensions
• Handling time and history
• Heterogeneous dimensions and facts
• Changing dimensions and facts
• Mixed changes
• Modeling for different types of time changes
• Late arriving data: facts and dimensions
• Fact to fact joins
• Predicate analysis for star joins
• Do all facts have count, amount; are all dimensions without them
• Factless facts
• Fact or dimension
• Design for parallel
• Multiple roles
• Use of surrogate keys
• Handling multi-valued dimensions
• Handling complex dimensions, such as hierarchical, ragged, multiple dimensions
• Designing aggregates
• Aggregates vs. on-the-fly
• Supporting restatement or aggregates
• Designing for trickle load
• Master data

Featured Speaker:

Tom Haughey InfoModel LLC

Design Challenges Workshop
Steve Hoberman, Steve Hoberman & Associates

On the ski slopes, each trail is graded a green circle for easy, a blue square for moderate, or a black diamond for difficult. The modeling challenges you face in the office can be put into similar categories. This workshop includes a carefully selected collection of easy, moderate, and difficult scenarios. After mastering easy challenges, you'll advance to more moderate and difficult challenges. This is not just a lecture. You'll get hands-on experience. By the completion of the workshop, you'll obtain a higher level of experience and have a few more techniques to apply when you get back to the office. This workshop includes three modules or trails:

• Green trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as business rules and assertions, normalization, nullability and definitions.
• Blue trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as abstraction, data politics, reverse engineering, surrogate keys, and summary tables.
• Diamond trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as dealing with unrealistic timeframes, history, integration, BCNF/4NF/5NF, and dimensional modeling

Featured Speaker:

Steve Hoberman Steve Hoberman & Associates

Full Day Tutorial
09:00-16:30

Being Right Isn’t Enough: A Crash Course Consulting Skills For Data Professionals
Graeme Simsion, University of Melbourne

It's not the technical problems that beat us. It's the soft stuff: getting into the client's head, selling our solutions, managing expectations, getting stakeholders to cooperate, writing reports... In the broadest sense, these are consulting skills, and most of us don't spend enough time on them.

Graeme Simsion’s half-day session on this topic last year was so well received that we’ve asked him to present the full-day version. Graeme is best known in the data management community as an authority on data modeling and data management - but he also spent 20 years building and managing a successful consultancy. Graeme ultimately managed some 70 professional staff, and has continued to consult in his own right.

The workshop has been designed to meet the need of internal consultants but external consultants have also found it valuable. Using a mixture of exercises, case-studies and practical tips, Graeme will cover some of the most important techniques for getting your ideas implemented, and your value recognised.

• Understanding the consulting role
• Setting and managing expectations
• Keeping the assignment on track
• Connecting with business managers
• Dealing with difficult people and situations
• Recognising common traps and warning signs
• Writing effective reports
• Building long-term relationships
  

Featured Speaker:

Graeme Simsion University of Melbourne