IS5-2I1224
COURSE ASSIGNMENTS
Information systems for strategic management – data warehousing
1997/1998
DW course assignments
ASSIGNMENT 1
Assignment description
* 6-7 written pages per group, to be handed in at the seminar.
* Each group present their paper
* All groups engage in active discussion after the presentations
Reading requirements
- Kimball
- Course documentation
- Course documentation
Introduction and pp 1-11, Chapter 1.
Section 6, Article 1.
Section 1, all articles.
Task
You are a consultant who has performed a ”problem analysis” of a company as regards their
decision-making and data utilisation capabilities. To your dismay, the analysis reveals that the
company represents a ”worst case scenario” in that it has nearly all the undesirable
characteristics you could possibly imagine.
Part A
Based on the course literature and lecture material list these problems, placing special
emphasis on the categories below.
 the nature of the decision situations faced by the organisation
 the decision-making culture in the organisation
 the systems environment in the organisation
 the availability and quality of data in the organisation
Part B
Out of the list of problems pick what you consider to be the 10 most important, rank them in
order of importance and motivate why you believe them to be so important
Part C
Refer back to your original, exhaustive list of problems and identify those that you believe
can be alleviated, or partially solved, by the introduction of a data warehouse in the
organisation. Specify how you believe the data warehouse can be used to tackle these
problems.
Part D
Compare the prioritised list of problems with the list of problems that you believe a data
warehouse has relevance to. Explain how you believe those problems that are on the
prioritised list, but not on the list of problems for which the data warehouse has relevance, can
be solved.
ASSIGNMENT 2
Assignment description
* 5-6 pages, to be submitted at the seminar by all groups.
* Two groups per task topic.
* One group presents their paper, the other comments it and gives constructive criticism.
* Both groups actively discuss the topic at the seminar
Reading requirements
- Kimball
- Course documentation
- Course documentation
pp 11-19, Chapter 1.
Section 2, all articles
Section 3, all articles
Task 1
 On the basis of the article 1 and article 2 in section 2, give a thorough explanation of the
process of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD).
 Explain the role of data in this process and discuss how the various tasks utilise and
transform the available data.
 Explain why the KDD process is referred to as a ”human centred” process and discuss the
role of background and domain knowledge in the KDD process’ constituent tasks.
Task 2
 Explain the flow of work in data mining and discuss the use of models in the various data
mining tasks.
 Explain how data mining fits into the KDD process described in article 1, section 2.
 On the basis of what you have learnt on data warehouses, explain how you believe a data
warehouse could support data mining.
Task 3
 Explain the links between the 4 enterprise data models discussed in Codd’s article
(Article 2, section 3, pp13, 14) and the rational model of decision making. Discuss the
relevance of each of these models to a decision-maker engaged in rational decision
making.
 Speculate on how an OLAP tool having Codd’s 12 requisite characteristics article (Article
2, section 3, pp18-25) could help an analyst engaged in the KDD (including data mining)
process. Make specific reference to the tasks in the process that you believe OLAP tools
can support.
ASSIGNMENT 3
(Still under construction)
Describe a number of major themes in the design of dimensional data warehouses. Three
groupings of themes, one group presents the next opposes.
ASSIGNMENT 4
(Still under construction)
Describe a project plan for the launch of a data warehouse. The plan should include the
following.
 Scheduling of activities
 Procurement of resources and actors
 Releases
ASSIGNMENT 5
(Still under construction)
Describe a dimensional design for the data warehouse. Also describe how to contend with
changing dimensions, aggregations, etc. Have a look at copy management issues and several
other major issues.