Having invented the corporate information factory (CIF) to help IT and database managers cut through the jungle of information technologies out there, bestselling author Bill Inmon again teams up with experts Claudia Imhoff and Ryan Sousa to show you how to integrate all key components of the modern information system architecture in a way that meets your evolving business needs.

You\'ll get clear explanations on how to integrate the enterprise data warehouse with a host of new technologies and solutions that have emerged since this groundbreaking work was first published in 1998. You\'ll also discover how to leverage these technologies to ensure broad access to information for end users, while reducing costs and improving scalability across the enterprise. Ultimately, you\'ll learn to design, build, and implement a company-wide information ecosystem that:

* Integrates with legacy systems and the Web

* Leverages third-party ERP, CRM, and eBusiness applications

* Exploits the latest in data exploration and mining technologies

* Takes advantage of low-cost alternative storage

* Scales across the enterprise through the use of data marts and operational data stores

* Accommodates the use of multiple data warehouses

* Can start small and grow incrementally'

Today's corporate IT and data warehouse managers are required to make a small army of technologies work together to ensure fast and accurate information for business managers. Bill Inmon created the Corporate Information Factoryto solve the needs of these managers. Since the First Edition, the design of the factory has grown and changed dramatically. This Second Edition, revised and expanded by 40% with five new chapters, incorporates these changes. This step-by-step guide will enable readers to connect their legacy systems with the data warehouse and deal with a host of new and changing technologies, including Web access mechanisms, e-commerce systems, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. The book also looks closely at exploration and data mining servers for analyzing customer behavior and departmental data marts for finance, sales, and marketing.

CLAUDIA IMHOFF, PhD, is a Senior Vice President of Braun Consulting and a popular speaker for national and international events on the corporate information factory. Dr. Imhoff has coauthored three books dealing with different aspects of the corporate information factory, including Building the Customer-Centric Enterprise (Wiley), and is a columnist for business and technology magazines.

RYAN SOUSA has extensive experience implementing large customer relationship management solutions using the corporate information factory. He is coauthor of Data Warehouse Performance (Wiley) and can be contacted at rwsousa@earthlink.net.'

Acknowledgments.

Creating an Information Ecosystem.

Introducing the Corporate Information Factory.

The External World Component.

The Applications Component.

The Integration and Transformation Layer Component.

The Operational Data Store Component.

The Data Warehouse Component.

The Data Mart Component.

The Exploration and Data Mining Warehouse Components.

The Alternative Storage Component.

The Internet/Intranet Components.

The Metadata Component.

The Decision Support Capabilities.

Variations to the Corporate Information Factory.

Building the Corporate Information Factory.

Managing the Corporate Information Factory.

Multiple Data Warehouses across a Large Enterprise.

Appendix A: CIF Architecture Guidelines.

Glossary.

Recommended Reading.

Index.'