Convey: The 3rd "C"

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound?

One of the primary responsibilities of the data warehouse is to take information that would otherwise not be available and deliver it to decision makers and analysts who can do something valuable with the information and make the world a better place.  Perhaps you might think that's a bit of a stretch, or perhaps I'm being overly optimistic.  However, my position is that we are more likely to make decisions that move society forward if we have more knowledge about the context in which we're making those decisions.  So, even if we don't always use better information to make better decisions, we couldn't even have the opportunity to try to make decisions if not for tools like the data warehouse.

Effectively conveying information is a factor of the format of the information, performance of the system, the accuracy of the content, and the ease of use with tools that will be used to access the information.  Most importantly, the data warehouse has to be able convey to users, in a natural way, how to find the information they need and what aspects of the physical implementation impact how the system can and can't be used.

#PragProWriMo word count: 48,061