Health & Human ServicesData Warehouse

Why a Data Warehouse

What about the Client Index?

The Client Index is an application that looks up individual Client’s within Health & Human Services.

The Client Index has limited reporting capability that can be slow when aggregating data.

Client Index vs. Data Warehouse

Client Index

• Centers around client’s activities

• Individual data

• 2 dimension reports– Age by System

• Slow aggregate reports

• “Cut-n-paste” into other applications

Data Warehouse

• Centers around business facts

• Aggregated data

• Multi-dimensional reports– Age by Race by Program

• Fast reports

• 3rd party reporting tools can be used.

Measures “facts” not activities

Facts are business performance measurements– Meals provided– Dollars expended– Hours worked

Facts are numerical and additive– Sum of dollars spent– Count of clients served

Facts are stored in a “fact table”– Each row represents a measurement at a particular

“grain”

What is a “grain”?

The grain refers to the level of detail at which a business fact is stored

Different businesses have different fact needs– A Social Services grain could be the number of

food stamp dollars given to a case each month– In-Home Support Services grain could be the

number of hours of service a client received in a provider’s pay period

Multi- dimensional view

A dimension is a textual description that relates to a fact, for example:– Ethnicity (White, Black, Japanese)– Language (English, Spanish, Tagalog)– Gender (Male, Female)– Country (USA, Mexico, Canada)

• State (California, Arizona, New Mexico)

Used in Queries

Dimensions are used to restrict and frame queries on facts, for example:“Give me a count of all Spanish speaking white males in

California”

• The fact is the count (a number)• The dimensions are:

– spanish (language), – white (race), – male (gender), – and California (state)

Answers Business Questions

How many Spanish speaking clients did H&HS serve in each department for each of the past 3 years?

Which cities currently have the highest concentration of Asian clients? What has the trend been?

How many people who receive Medi-Cal received a service in 2003 from health services, by service?

Source 1Text Files

Souce 3ODBC database

Source 2Mainframedownload

OperationalData

Sources

Staging Database

Import 1

Import 2

Import 3

Stage

Activities

Stage

Client Data

Matching

Adds / Updates

Staging Area

Code Translations

FormatTransformations

Client Index

Client Activity

Client Tables

Presentation Area Data Access

What makes a Data Warehouse?

WarehouseDimensions

Facts

Analysis Services- Analysis Server- Cube Storage

Stage Facts

1 or more facttable(s) per

System

Bus Matrix

• A matrix which is used identify and document the intersections between business process and common dimensions

• Each business process represents a row in the matrix and each dimension a column

BusinessSystem

Dat

e

Pro

gram

Bus Matrix for H&HS

Clie

nt

Add

ress

Cou

ntry

Insyst X X X

SAWS X X X

Client Index X X X X X

Where do we begin?

• Choose the systems to include

• Identify the exact grain of the business process

• Identify the dimensions available for use with each fact table row

• Choose the numeric facts of what is being measured

Key to Success

To ensure success end user involvement is required:Data warehouse success is tied directly to user acceptance. If the users haven’t accepted the data warehouse …then your efforts have been exercises in futility. (Kimball, 2002)