Advice for a Career in Data Warehousing

1. Adapted from response by Anjan on Wednesday, December 15, 2004

If you are talking about job market in Data Warehousing, there would always be jobs and it would always continue to grow.

Firstly, as the organizations grow in their data volume day by day, they start experiencing new issues with data and always focus on optimizing the data warehouse for its efficiency.

Secondly, the Data Warehousing is focused on storing the historical data and performs analytics on that, it is always likely to impact the bottom line for the organization. As the general market becomes more competitive, the organizations focus on the KPIs like process, productivity, profitability etc… which demands an optimal data warehousing environment.

If you want to make a career in data warehousing, you should chose one of the two aspects of the data warehousing namely ETL and BI. I would suggest pick one of the areas, pick one tool and try to master it. You would also need to understand Business Scenarios.

That should be pretty much it. Focus on performance and complicated business requirements. You can access a ton of on-line material available on the web and read a lot of books.

2. Adapted from response by Kenneth on Thursday, December 16, 2004

First, be sure to choose at career in an area of your passion. The job market may be good, but to be really successful you must have the passion to work in the area of Data Warehousing.

Use your time in college to study the DWH and BI area - get hands on experience in as many areas as possible and find your passion. No matter which sub area you may like you always have to keep in mind that your work effort ultimately must have positive impact on the bottom line. You may build the most fantastic BI/DWH solution technically, but it won't matter if it is not used by the decision makers.