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Message Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 @ 17:12:16 GMT

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Compression discussers,

From a vendor's perspective, it is impressive that some individuals can create their own compression scripts. However, there are definitely merits of using an excellent and proven compression tool.

Here are some additional points that should be considered in this discussion:

- Who is liable if the internal solution caused data corruption or fails to achieve the maximum benefit?

- What are the initial costs associated with internally building a tool (development time, testing, implementation etc.) vs. purchasing a tool that already is proven in the market?

- Better yet.if a tool already exists, what are the costs associated with the time spent building the tool which could have be utilized to do other meaningful tasks.

- Is the scripting process easy to use?

- Are these scripts utilized an easy point-and-click process?

- How easy is it to debug?

- Once the developer is gone who is going to guarantee support?

- Does it have 24/7 support?

- Has it been tested in other warehouses around the world?

- Was it tested on every possible combination of tables including PPI, Value-Ordered Indexes, Permanent Journal Tables, and tables with special blocking?

- Is it keeping up with the latest improvements of compression?

- Is it flexible to change?

- What are the long term costs of maintaining an in-house solution?

- Can it be a centralized solution so anyone can use it?

- Is it easy to report the potential results to management with graphs and charts?

- Did the individual understand that compressing some tables can actually make them bigger?

- Does the in-house solution provide a filter so the largest tables could be compressed first?

- Did the scripts evaluate columns not eligible for compression such as VARCHAR and give you the option to convert to CHAR with compression?

Given the above points, the costs associated with developing an in-house solution may, in fact, be more expensive then operating and maintaining a proven vendor solution.

That stated, and regardless of what your decision is, implementing compression is always an excellent technique to save money and space in your data warehouse.

Best regards,

Eric Rivard

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