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Kimball Method

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The Kimball Method is a dimensional modeling approach for building a data warehouse that builds the data warehouse from business‑focused data marts, using fact and dimension tables to create a fast, intuitive, and scalable analytical environment.  The Kimball method is based on a series of key principles that define how data should be structured and organized to facilitate its analysis and exploitation. These principles form the basis of dimensional modeling, providing a clear and systematic framework. The Kimball Method was conceived during the 1980s by Ralph Kimball and other colleagues at Metaphor Computer Systems. Since then, it has been successfully utilized by thousands of data warehouse and business intelligence project teams. Kimball and his colleagues did not invent the idea of multidimensional data or even the earliest forms of star schemas; what they did was formalize, popularize, and systematize them into the modern dimensional modeling method used worldwide. Kimball’s...
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Modern Analytics and Business Intelligence

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In a prior blog post I mentioned the limitations of traditional business intelligence and business analytics. One of the more significant limitations of traditional business intelligence is the lack of support for semantics by traditional business intelligence and business analytics platforms.   To address this limitation, traditional business intelligence is adding what is being referred to as a " semantic layer ".  A semantic layer is the governed business meaning layer that defines the " things ", the " associations between things ", and other stuff necessary for a analytics systems and artificial intelligence systems speak the same language. An example of adding a semantic layer can be seen by checking out Google Looker . Looker uses something called LookML or Looker Modeling Language .  Looker Modeling Language is described as the language that is used in Looker to create semantic data models. Looker says that a "semantic model is the foundat...
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Limitations of Traditional Business Intelligence (BI)

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First, what exactly is business intelligence (BI)? Here is how several business intelligence software platform vendors describe business intelligence as it is currently instantiated today: Per IBM  ( IBM Cognos Analytics ): Business intelligence (BI) is a set of technological processes for collecting, managing and analyzing organizational data to yield insights that inform business strategies and operations. Per Microsoft ( Microsoft PowerBI ): Business intelligence (BI) uncovers insights for making strategic decisions. Business intelligence tools analyze historical and current data and present findings in intuitive visual formats. Per Salesforce  ( Tableau ): Business intelligence combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization, data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help organizations make more data-driven decisions. In practice, you know you’ve got modern business intelligence when you have a comprehensive view of your organizatio...
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Contemplating a Theory of the Enterprise

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This is some brain storming to figure out how to think about a "theory of the enterprise " that I want to create. One of the inputs is that there is already a " theory of the firm ". That is an economic theory that is used to understand things like why firms (i.e. businesses, organizations) exist; understand boundaries between firms; why firms are structured the way they are structured; what drives actions of firms; and how to test theories.  That is not really what I want. Another input, as I point out in this blog post , is the fact that Object Management Group (OMG) and the Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation (EKGF) are " championing the use of enterprise knowledge graphs ".  This appears to be their definition of a knowledge graph: "An Enterprise Knowledge Graph is a governed, semantics‑first, graph‑based representation of an enterprise’s concepts, relationships, rules, and facts; integrating data and meaning across systems to create a unified,...
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Logical System Explained in Simple Terms (Another Try)

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A logical system provides a formal structured mechanism to help us clearly think, argue, and discover truth. Both humans can understand such logical systems and machines can effectively interpret such logical systems if those systems are represented effectively. Over the years I have tried to explain the "moving parts" of a logical system many times.  See under "Additional Information" below for the list of my best attempts. This is another shot.  What I am trying to achieve is to explain the moving pieces of a logical  system in concise terms such that a business professional with a liberal arts degree can understand what I am trying to explain. To start, consider the Triangle of Meaning .  The Triangle of Meaning explains that meaning exists simultaneously in three forms: The actual real world thing which is being explained/described. ( Thing ) The conceptualization of that actual real world thing in the form that a human can understand ( Conceptualization ; Mode...
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Holon

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The term holon was first coined by Arthur Koestler in 1967. This article was inspired by Kurt Cagle's article,  The Living Graph: Holons and the Four-Graph Model . A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole. Holons are things that exist as both wholes and parts of larger systems at the same time.  Holons have a dual nature in that they function independently by one set of rules while at the same time they contribute to the functioning of the larger system in which they exist. A hierarchy of holons is called a holarchy . The notion of the holon provides a framework for describing complexities which exist when trying to describe the connections between things. By understanding the notion of the holon one can understand and describe connections better by understanding the distinction between the perspective of the "part" as distinct from the perspective of the "whole". A classic example used to expl...
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Competency Question

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A competency question is a test question you write before building an ontology or a theory to make sure the ontology/theory will be able to answer the kinds of questions the stakeholders of a system care about and need the ontology/theory to answer. A competency question is both a specification for what needs to exist in an ontology/theory and an acceptance test for the constructed ontology to make certain epistemic risk is minimized. A competency question is a mistake proofing tool .  A competency question is a lot like a unit test and the notion of extreme programming which is referred to as test driven development . The use of competency questions is an ontology engineering best practice. I became aware of the notion of the competency question from the article The Question is the Contract by Jessica Talisman.  I became aware of extreme programming and Agile software development probably 20 years ago from a software engineer. The importance of these proactive approache...
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