• Robert Frasca (3/15/2010)


    I've actually found that it's easier and faster to develop the OLTP model and the ODS in parallel. It also allows you to build a data source for your down-stream data warehouse that can be accessed without impacting the OLTP database. This is, after all, why so many companies use transactional replication, i.e. in order to populate their ODS for querying/reporting purposes.

    I appreciate your purist view of this, and I agree that a transfer from OLTP to a OLAP/Warehouse environment is optimal, and best-practice for reporting and other analyses, and if the resources are available, I totally agree with that notion; however, I have a number of customers and environments where operating in that environment is quite a challenge because of financial resources, and support and maintenance concerns (ie not having a DBA to support it).