Data Matters (Unseen): The structure of the MATTER DWH program

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The structure of the MATTER DWH program

Introduction

In this blog post I'll show the most recent version of our detailed track and course overview. Note that this is still a concept and is subject to change (although I hope not significantly). I will not discuss the contents of individual courses or tracks in this post, but instead focus on the overall structure of the program.

"Broad where we must, Deep where we can"

As blogged earlier, the MATTER program has the following tracks:

The program's track design reflects one of the basic principles of our program: " Broad where we must, Deep where we can". Because of this we decided to have a 3 layered approach in our program.
Layer 1 is broad and teaches basic and advanced methodology/technology tracks for Data Vault, Anchor Modeling and Temporal Data modeling. The Architectural and ETL track have been integrated with the Data Vault track because there is a lot of overlap there. We don't assume all students want to follow all the layer 1 courses when doing the program, and some students might only want to follow some of the courses in this layer without following the rest of the program. This layer is probably the most dynamic one as well. We want to offer possibilities to extend knowledge without trying to teach everything. Expect more (optional) courses in the next iteration of the program (basic Data Vault, Dimensional Modeling, Agile etc.) with also additional partnerships.
In the 2nd layer we go deeper and try to connect knowledge from layer 1. We will still focus on specific methodology and architecture discussions. The main track here is on Information Modeling. Also the Architecture course is formally in this layer.
The Master Class is where things come together and we tie all kinds of knowledge from the different tracks into a more consistent whole. We will discuss mechanics of creating modeling approaches by understanding modeling techniques and their place within (DWH) Architectures. We will also focus on the relation between architecture, methodology and modeling.

Course Overview

The following table shows all courses of the MATTER program, their intended level, prerequisites and number of days.

ID	Name	Track	lvl	Program Prerequisite Days
TEMP INTRO (I)	Time in the Database	TEMP	250	SQL, ER,3(T)NF, SQL	1
TEMP MOD (II)	Temporal Data Modeling	TEMP	350	TEMP INTRO (I) + Dimensional Modeling	1
AM MOD (I)	Anchor Modeling	AM	300	TEMP INTRO (I)	2
AM ADV (II)	Anchor Modeling Architecture	AM	350	AM MOD (I)	1
AM IMPL (III)	AM Implementation	AM	400	AM ADV (II)	1
*AM CERT*	AM Certification	AM		AM ADV (II)	½
*AM ADV CERT*	Advanced AM Certification	AM		AM CERT+AM PROJECT	½
DV MOD (I)	Advanced DV Modeling	DV	350	Professional DV knowledge (e.g. DV Cert, DV course+DV exp)	2
DV ARCH (II)	DV+DWH Architecture	DV	350	DV MOD (I)	3
DV ADV (III)	DV Advanced Architecture & Modeling	DV	400	DV ARCH (II)	2
FCO-IM INTRO (I)	Hands on FCO-IM	FCO-IM	250	Basic database modeling/design	3
FCO-IM CASE (II)	FCO-IM case	FCO-IM	300	FCO-IM INTRO (I)	3
FCO-IM TRANS (III)	Transformation algorithms+case	FCO-IM	400	FCO-IM CASE (II)+ Dimensional Modeling Mod 2of3: DV MOD (I),AM MOD (I) ,TMP MOD (I)	4
DWH MASTERCLASS	Fact oriented + Temp. DWH Arch.	MSTR	450	FCO-IM TRANS (III) + : AM ADV (II) or DV ARCH (II)	2
*EXAM & CERT*	Examination+CERT	MSTR		MASTERCLASS	1

In other blog posts I'll discuss tracks and courses in more detail. (if you have specific questions or interest in a course just contact me.)

Course Dependencies

The following diagram shows the detailed dependencies between the tracks and their courses. For example, we assume students following the FCO-IM transformation course understand two out of three data modeling techniques from our program (Anchor Modeling, Data Vault or generic Temporal Data Modeling). As you can see from the dependency arrows we combine knowledge gained from information modeling track and architecture courses in our masterclass on modeling and automation to understand advanced architectural concepts which should underpin our data warehouse designs.

Course subject matter matrix

We also have a detailed subject matter matrix per course to give an indication on what type of subjects will be taught in each course.

Course\MATTER	Modeling	Metadata	Arch	Autom	Temp	Trans	EDW	RDBMS	Impl	Related
TEMP INTRO (I)	-	-	-	-	++	-	-	++	++	-
TEMP MOD (II)	+	+	+	+	++	++	-	+	+	-
AM MOD (I)	++	-	+	-	-	+	-	+	+	-
AM ADV (II)	+	+	+	-	++	+	+	-	-	+
AM IMPL (III)	-	-	+	+	+	-		++	++
AM CERT	++	+	+	-	+	+	-	-	-	-
AM ADV CERT	++	+	+	-	+	+	+	-	-	-
DV MOD (I)	++	+	+	+	++	++	+	+	++	-
DV ARCH (II)	+	++	++	++	+	+	++	++	+	+
DV ADV (III)	++	++	++	+	+	++	++	-	+	++
FCO-IM INTRO (I)	++	-	-	-	-	++	-	-	-	-
FCO-IM CASE (II)	+++	-	-	+	-	+	-	+	+	-
FCO-IM TRANS (III)	++	+	+	+	+	+++	-	+	+	-
DWH “MASTERCLASS”	++	++	+++	++	+	+++	++	+	-	+++
EXAM and CERT	++	+	+++	+	++	+++	++	-	-	+