The past year has seen a lot of changes in the data warehouse industry. New companies, products, and technologies have entered the market or appear just over the horizon.

For nearly a decade, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been developing a comprehensive standard for specifying distributed processing systems. This standard, the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), describes the foundations of distributed processing, including key definitions of terminology and an overall architectural framework.

IT managers know that developing good software is hard. It is even harder to coordinate business requirements and software development. As companies begin to transition from more conventional ways of architecting applications to distributed, component-based designs, this process is likely to become even harder.

Yes, I'm currently the chief architect on a project for a large utility in the Midwest. It's the software to implement electrical deregulation.

In many cases, vendors are acquiring other companies to add new technology to their product line. Most of the vendors are trying to develop more complete data warehouse suites. This is mirroring a trend in the industry -- they're all moving away from offering point solutions.

The past year has seen a lot of changes in the data warehouse industry. New companies, products, and technologies have entered the market or appear just over the horizon.

©1999 by TeraQuest Metrics, Inc. All rights reserved.

©1999 by TeraQuest Metrics, Inc. All rights reserved.

©1999 by ZULTNER & COMPANY. All rights reserved.

"If I had to reduce my message for management to just a few words, "I'd say it all had to do with reducing variation." -- W. Edwards Deming [3]

The development team settled down in its bullpen one fine Monday morning in April, ready to begin work on its new project. The lead developer said, "You folks start coding. I'll saunter over to executive row and see what they want."

The development team settled down in its bullpen one fine Monday morning in April, ready to begin work on its new project. The lead developer said, "You folks start coding. I'll saunter over to executive row and see what they want."

©1999 Quality Plus Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

©1999 Quality Plus Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Metrics are powerful tools, but they are not popular with people caught in tough projects. Nevertheless, there are basic metrics available [1, 4] that can help in current and future projects. But just as important as the content of the metrics is collecting and using data in a way that pleases everyone on the project.

The area of measurement is a fascinating one because everyone thinks they measure lots of things, yet almost no one does. We think we know what we have, who works for us, their skill sets, the applications they use, how happy our customers are, and the rate at which we're really growing. But, most often, we don't.

The area of measurement is a fascinating one because everyone thinks they measure lots of things, yet almost no one does. We think we know what we have, who works for us, their skill sets, the applications they use, how happy our customers are, and the rate at which we're really growing. But, most often, we don't.

©1999 by TeraQuest Metrics, Inc. All rights reserved.

©1999 by TeraQuest Metrics, Inc. All rights reserved.

©1999 by ZULTNER & COMPANY. All rights reserved.

©1999 by ZULTNER & COMPANY. All rights reserved.

The development team settled down in its bullpen one fine Monday morning in April, ready to begin work on its new project. The lead developer said, "You folks start coding.