Sagent Technology Experts' New Book Applies a Business Focus for Constructing Data Warehouses
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Sagent Technology, Inc., provider of a leading turnkey solution for bringing data marts to the Web, has announced the immediate availability of Data Warehouse Design Solutions, a new book published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Data Warehouse Design Solutions is co-authored by Sagent Professional Services's vice president, Michael Venerable, and data warehousing consultant, Christopher Adamson. The book approaches data warehouse design from the business perspective. The reader learns how to understand a business problem and how to design a dimensional model that supports it.

Data Warehouse Design Solutions is organized around business processes, not technical components or features of a data warehouse. Each chapter addresses a particular subject area, such as sales and marketing, production, inventory, financial reporting, budgeting, and profitability, as well as provides detailed examples from various industries. After each business problem is thoroughly examined, the book illustrates how to produce a data warehouse design and explains the decisions leading up to the design solution. Finally, the design is used to produce a series of reports, which answer the original business questions.

"Successful data warehouses are built for one reason: to answer business questions. Data Warehouse Design Solutions helps warehouse designers understand the questions that will make their warehouses a success," said Ken Gardner, CEO and Founder, Sagent Technology. "In this book, Mike and Chris have translated their vast experience in designing scalable data marts into a practical roadmap to implementing enterprise-wide data marts. It is invaluable for developers, business analysts and consultants who want to get beyond theory and into the real world."

Adamson has implemented data warehouses in a variety of industries. His customers include Fortune 500 companies, large and small businesses, government agencies, and software tool vendors. He is also a frequent speaker at industry seminars. Venerable has ten years of experience designing and building Decision Support Systems (DSS) solutions in numerous industries, and, in 1992 he founded Talus, a respected data warehousing and client/server consulting firm. Venerable and Adamson recently joined Sagent Professional Services as a result of Sagent's acquisition of Talus. They now lead the effort to deliver business value to Sagent's customers through the effective application of data warehouse technology.

To effectively design a data warehouse, developers need to understand the business uses of the data warehouse. Using real business cases in each chapter, this book shows developers how business managers in different corporate functions, like sales and marketing, actually use the data warehouse to make decisions. Each case concludes with a rich set of data warehouse designs that address the unique business need of the situation. The book also includes a CD-ROM with working models of all databases in the book and HTML versions of all reports for specific business uses such as marketing, sales, and financial analysis.

Sagent Technology was founded in June 1995 to make business data more usable by bringing it closer to decision-makers. Sagent is a privately-owned company that was co-founded by Ken Gardner and John Zicker. Its customers include Nations Bank, Home Savings of America, JP Morgan, MCI, Bell South, ValueRX, Jiffy Lube and Eddie Bauer. The company has strategic relationships with Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, ADP, Advent, Unisys, Usinternetworking and Ralph Kimball Associates. Sagent is funded by Crosspoint Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Greylock Limited Partnerships and U.S. Venture Partners.

For more information, see http://www.sagenttech.com