CIS 624 Spring
2001
03/06/01 Midterm
Exam Test
Form A
Name:
Instructions:
Answer all questions in the answer sheet
provided. On Multiple Choice, choose the ONE BEST ANSWER.
Remember to put the letter of your test
form on the top of your answer sheet.
Hand in Test, Answer Sheet, and Help
Sheets, all with you name.
Multiple Choice
(2 points
each)
1. Which of the following is NOT part of data warehouse project planning?
A) Readiness assessment
B) Interviewing future users
C) Determining staffing needs
D) All of the above
E) None of the above.
2. What
products / infrastructure can be important aspects of a data warehousing
initiative?
A) database management system
B) extract, transform and load tool
C) server(s)
D) data access tool, such as an OLAP tool
E) All of the above
F) None of the above
True/False – If False Explain Why!
(3 points
each)
3. Typically,
the biggest justification of a data warehouse project is the time savings for
the organization’s business analysts.
4. It is
important to discuss an interview with teammates and fill in gaps in notes as
soon as possible after the interview.
5. It is
recommended that initial development of a data warehouse should target as wide
an area within a company as possible in order to gain organizational allies and
supporters.
6. A
dimension in a star schema could have multiple hierarchies.
7. Aggregate
data is redundant if transaction data is stored in the data warehouse.
8. One
advantage of using a star schema design for a data mart is that it makes it
easy for data access tools to generate SQL code in order to produce reports.
Completion (fill in the blank) (mostly key terms
(not all of which are a single word))
(3 points
each)
9. When a
business user desires more detailed information that they are currently looking
at, they can ________, looking at data divided by more refined attributes or
restricted to a particular value for an attribute. For instance, sales by year
could be refined to sales by quarter, or to sales of a particular department by
year.
10. The
________ of a project is the task or tasks that if delayed would delay the
completion of the whole project. Project management software can aid in the
identification of this.
11. In a
dimensional model based on a star schema, a(n) ________ table is in the center
of all of the other tables, linked to each.
12. Some data
warehouses have failed because different parts of the warehouse were developed
independently, and as it turns out incompatibly. These individual, incompatible
data marts have been referred to as ________.
13. The
_______ room is another way of describing the process of extracting data from
source systems and preparing it for the data warehouse.
14. ________
is data about data. It is specified by members of the data warehouse team – frequently
into a tool that will use it to carry out part of the data warehouse process.
Short Answer
(points as
shown)
(5 points)
15. Data
warehouses exist separate from the operational systems. Why is this separation
desirable? (at least 2 good reasons)
(4 points)
16. Why is it
recommended that fact tables be at the atomic grain size?
(6 points)
17. Briefly
explain - once a data mart has been delivered to users, what activities are
important for the on-going success of the data mart?
(5 points)
18. What is
involved in building a business justification for a data warehousing project?
(4 points)
19. Why is it
important to break the project plan down into small tasks, preferably taking
two weeks or less?
(8 points)
20. Briefly
explain advantages and disadvantages of using a tape recorder during
requirements determination interviews.
Short Answer: Applied
(points as
shown)
(12 points)
21. Imagine
that a music swapping service is building a data mart surrounding the
downloading of songs. A song dimension includes an attribute of whether the
song is subject to royalty payments or not. If this attribute is modeled as a
slowly changing dimension using Kimball et al’s “type 2” method – create a new
record after a change, briefly explain how this method yields correct results
for both questions such as a) show the number of downloads by royalty status
and b) show the number of downloads by musical genre.
(8 points)
22. Imagine
that an auto insurance company is building a data mart surrounding accident
claims. They have determined that the grain size of the fact table will be an
individual accident. Dimensions include the insured person, the car, the time,
etc. Candidate facts include: total claim amount, speed of insured at time of
accident, and weather conditions at time of accident. For each fact, explain
how additive it is.
(8 points)
23. Critique
the following question, asked of a manager of customer service (it isn’t the
first question asked):
“Don’t you think the warehouse should be web-enabled for maximum data availability ?”