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.

Use Cases

WhereScape 3D exists because our customers asked for it. Having experienced the benefits of WhereScape RED, our customers realized that their project risk center had shifted – WhereScape RED ensured a reliable, repeatable, rapid build-operate-renovate cycle, but WhereScape RED did little to ensure that a project was planned and reality-tested properly, before the build-operate-renovate cycle began. When we asked our customers what they intended to do with WhereScape 3D, they were clear about how they'd use it:

• Source System Characterization: With WhereScape 3D, our customers can discover, explore, profile and document possible source systems for any data warehousing projects in hours, assessing source system fitness empirically and systematically, and producing complete documentation for project teams and source system operators.
• Source System Impact Assessment: When our customers are planning source system migrations that impact existing data warehouses and data marts, WhereScape 3D permits them to assess the impact of a change-over on existing BI infrastructure, using test instances, prior to go-live dates, and develop appropriate response plans: including data warehouse and data mart schema changes and enhancements, and new or revised ETL logic.
• Packaged Data Model Proofing: As the purchase and implementation of packaged enterprise data models becomes accepted practice, WhereScape 3D allows our customers considering such models to reality-test those models, as targets, in their operating environments, quickly and completely, and allows for the revision and enhancement of those models in the target environment where they will be implemented.
• Target Schema Testing: WhereScape 3D allows our customers to remove the single biggest technical project risk: the coverage and fit of the target schema, from the analytical user perspective. By encouraging the design and testing of target schema in quick, iterative cycles, WhereScape 3D ensures that target schema slated for implementation have been thoroughly reviewed, tested and approved by end-users before project build begins.