Modern enterprises that stay ahead of the game know the critical importance of having the right
information at their disposal to help make key decisions that impact the direction their business moves.
This being the case, it is no surprise that a 2006 Gartner Group survey found that CIO’s identified
Business Intelligence (BI) as their number two technology priority, up from number ten just three years
ago.1 This emphasis was echoed by a 2007 survey performed by InformationWeek that found nearly half
of IT executives plan to increase their spending on BI above 2006 levels.2
These trends clearly indicate that smart businesses recognize that their ability to compete greatly
depends on their intelligent use of technology and information whether the aim is to help their customers
communicate, socialize, share and locate information, entertain, or shop for goods and services in a more
efficient manner.
However, the increasing thirst for more and better information to help make decisions has brought with it
a number of interesting challenges. First the sheer volume of information being managed in corporate
data warehouses is fast becoming a key issue. Commenting on a 2006 survey conducted by his
company, TDWI senior manager of research Philip Russom says, “Data warehouses will experience on
average at least 33 percent annual growth in data volumes, 50 percent or more when subject to
aggressive collections of customer, supply chain, eCommerce or compliance data.”3 That same survey
found that 36% of data warehouses were multi-terabyte in 2006 and that 48% would be so by the end of
2007.
Second, the increasing appetite for business intelligence information has spawned specialized data
warehousing “workload types” (different patterns of data growth and usage) that cannot be reconciled or
well managed in a single analytic data store. More will be said on this issue later.
Third and finally, the cost of implementing and managing complex business intelligence infrastructures
throughout a growing and demanding organization is steadily moving upward. In the same
InformationWeek study quoted above, 39% of those polled complained that expensive software licenses
prohibited them from rolling out the data warehousing/business intelligence initiatives they would like.
To combat these issues and meet the goal of delivering scalable and fast-responding data warehousing
systems, modern businesses are turning to open-source solutions to satisfy their needs. Open source
software has proven itself in the online world and is moving steadily into enterprise software installations.
For example, a Gartner Group study predicts that 70% of all IT organizations will use open source
databases by the end of 2008.4 This being the case, it was natural for open source technology to expand
into the area of data warehousing and business intelligence.
Although the MySQL database server has been the proven leader in database management for online
businesses, many have wondered if it has the capabilities to also lead in the area of data warehousing
and business intelligence. This paper examines the MySQL strategy for data warehousing and
showcases the unique abilities and advantages that come with choosing MySQL as a provider for data
warehousing and business intelligence needs.
1http://www.intelligententerprise.com/channels/bi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198701576
2http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198001258
3http://www.netezza.com/releases/2006/release061906.htm.
4Gartner Group, Enterprise Databases in an Open Source World, September 2006.
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