The list of personal projects on my to-do list is much like my list of TV shows to watch… seemingly endless, growing constantly, and generally gets paid little attention when work and life get in the way.

However, the project I’m about to begin had been circling near the top of my list for quite some time, but recent events have ensured that it sits at the very top of that list. During a recent job interview, I was asked to give myself a 1-10 rating on my knowledge of Kimball-modelled data warehouse concepts, followed by a few specific technical questions. Since this was the go-to data warehousing structure for a majority of my career, I gave myself a modest 7-8, on the basis that I haven’t read the Kimball Data Warehousing series end-to-end…

Moving on to the interview questions, I have to admit that I struggled coming up with a concise answer most questions! Ever had that situation where you’ve lost the next word in a sentence? That, but for at least 70% of my interview. Without a doubt, a humbling providing a score of 7 - 8 / 10, and coming up with answers to concepts I had definitely used in the past, but couldn’t recite. It may have been nervousness after all, but I swore never to let that happen for that concept again.

Which brings me to the next series, where I start this project once and for all. Up next is a blogging series that’s going to cover various chapters and sections from all 3 books of the Kimball Data Warehouse series: The Data Warehouse Toolkit, The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit, and the Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit.

Aim of this project is to extract the concepts from each section of this series, simplify where possible, and provide real-life applications and case studies. On a personal level, I’m hoping to fill the vast amount of knowledge gaps I have with this subject, improve my writing skills, and keep my personal blog up-to-date with regular postings.

As is the usual case with personal blogs, they often becoming a second-class citizen when life gets busy. To avoid this, I have a team out there who will ensure the posts are regular, the content is factual, and the posts are human-readable. They’re a part of this project as much as I am, so I’m grateful for their support in this endeavour.

Whether there be ups, downs or in-betweens, I’m excited to share this information with you, and I’m looking forward to this journey!

Time to make a start! Gerald

PS. Despite how awful I thought I did, I was eventually offered the role, which I have since accepted!