Data miners at Sussex police have noticed a correlation between violent incidents and a full moon and based on this fact deploy more police on the streets of Brighton at times of peak lunar brightness. Well it makes a change from noticing that nappies (diapers) and beer goes together.

Talking of Brighton, Jon Mead writes a few notes on data warehouse healthchecks. I completely agree with his approach – it is the same as mine The article is worth a look. As Jon points out the exact steps taken in any healthcheck vary – there is such a variety of design goals and techniques in building warehouses that there can be no such thing as the universal data warehouse diagnostic script. It needs technical experience and a eye for business data analysis.

But at the end of the day we all are trying to answer these four questions

1. Does the data load quickly enough
2. Does the data load frequently enough
3. Can the data be read quickly enough
4. and, can you trust the quality of the data

Sounds simple but often needs an expert eye.