Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

Web Farming is an exciting new area emerging out of data warehousing and web technology. It is defined as systematic business intelligence by farming the information resources of the Web. The objective is to enhance the contents of a data warehousing system. Data warehouses are usually based upon the contents of internal operations databases. With Web Farming, the focus can be balanced with external business factors, dealing moment by moment with global changes in the business environment.

Instead of surfing the Web haphazardly or gathering massive search results, Web Farming concentrates on an evolutionary process to systematically discover, acquire, structure, and disseminate content, constantly guided by business-critical intelligence to the enterprise. A four-stage methodology is suggested, along with growth strategy in the supporting architecture. Extensive coverage of standards, tools, and resources for Web Farming is given, along with an in-depth discussion of the important societal issues of privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and information espionage.

This is the first book that focuses on the critical features of Web Farming. This book will appeal to both a technical and business audience. The technical audience is anyone interested in the use of Web technology for data warehouse development, including corporate IT professionals, database administrators, network administrators, and all others who are responsible for data warehouse and data mining. The business audience is anyone interested in establishing effective business intelligence, such as strategic planners, business development managers, competitive intelligence analysts, and market researchers.

* Discusses the issues surrounding the requirements and benefits of web farming in business, as well as the practical issues of software tools, techniques, and standards that provide a wealth of knowledge for the database professional
* Provides a discussion of methodology and architecture required to successfully implement web-farming techniques
* Includes access to author's resource center for web farming which is updated on a regular basis and provides links, references, reviews for relevant software and software tools, and colleague interaction.

Dr. Richard D. Hackathorn is a well-known innovator and international educator in the information systems field with over thirty years of experience. In 1991 he founded Bolder Technology, Inc., to focus on professional education and technology innovation in the area of Enterprise Systems and Connectivity, serving professional clients including Lockheed Martin, Shell Oil, Microsoft Corporation, and Sybase. Dr. Hackathorn has published numerous articles and is the author of Enterprise Database Connectivity and co-author of Using the Data Warehouse.