WhereScape Data Driven Design (3D) is the industry's first data warehouse planning tool. WhereScape 3D focuses on the characterization and testing of the constraints present in every data warehousing project - the source systems, the built or bought target schema, business rules and end-user needs and expectations. It then walks data warehousing project teams through the process of source and target exploration, modeling and mapping; usability and data legibility sessions with users; and scoping, sizing and costing activities. The output from WhereScape 3D is complete project documentation - suitable for review, distribution and governance submission.
Whether you are starting with a set of source systems, a purchased industry data model, a long-in-the-tooth data warehouse or mart slated for replacement, or a complex migration to a new source system environment, WhereScape 3D starts where the team starts, providing tools and templates focused on the use case at hand.
With WhereScape 3D, data warehouse designers, modelers and planners can:
- Auto-profile, explore and document any potential source system for a data warehousing project, including detailed examination of source data at the table and column levels.
- Design, model and test any target data warehouse schema, whether normal form, dimensional or hybrid using real source system data.
- Capture user stories, interviews and all other requirement artifacts as an integral part of the planning process in a managed repository.
- Investigate a purchased enterprise data model in the planned target environment in conjunction with real source system data.
- Perform a complete source-to-target mapping between profiled and documented source systems, and designed target schema.
- Test planned schema, populated with data, for functionality and coverage, with end users, before building activities commence.
- View, manipulate and associate conceptual and logical views of the proposed data warehouse or data mart.
- Capture the design rationale for the new environment, while the project team is in planning.
- Generate task-based views of the project, and assign resources, time and cost to each task, while maintaining data-based and model-based views of the project.
- Generate complete project documentation, for governance, funding or internal communications.
Ultimately, WhereScape 3D's comprehensive and context-based approach to planning data warehouses and data marts allows data warehousing teams to reality-test their projects in every relevant dimension before the build process begins - planned data warehouses right, now.