How to understand the business of AdventureWorks2008 DB

I 开发者_如何学编程am trying to understand AdventureWorks Database as most of the good examples on web and books are usually explained taking it as a sample database.

I found few links like

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms124825(v=sql.100).aspx
• http://merc.tv/img/fig/AdventureWorks2008_Conceptual.pdf
• http://merc.tv/img/fig/AdventureWorks2008.gif

But I found them insufficient for explaining the business completely. I tried to practice some queries as well so that I could get more knowledge about its business. But looking at 70 tables, I finds myself no were in the understanding of its Business.

Can you help me giving some good likes where I can get more details about it.

EDIT

I never read northwind database. Is it important to understand it to get a good grasp on AdventureWorks2008

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Looking into what you are doing, I think it is not important for you to fully understand the AW business. If would be a better use of your time to understand the queries that are required and just the 2-3 tables in question rather than the entire database.

Even thought the MSTS certification book pulls from the AW DB, understanding that database is not part of the certification. If you have trouble with specific questions from your book, I would suggest you post what you are doing and what result you are trying to achieve.

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I can go on explaining the business of AW but it will consume a lot of time as I cannot completely give the business understanding. You will only understand those things that I will describe here. I am currently going through this book- The Microsoft Datawarehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball. This is the best book that will give you a detailed understanding of AW business.

The business requirements ranges from a variety of people. From sales to technical people and others. So I suggest you read the first 3 chapters of this book as it simplifies learning the business.

If reading is not feasible I will show you another approach:

AdventureWorks (AW) is an imaginary manufacturer and seller of bicycles and its accessories (Table Production.ProductCategory). The schemas help a lot in understanding their business, sales, employee data and product info. The schemas involved in AW database are: HumanResources, Person, Production, Purchasing, Sales. The table names are self-explanatory to a great extent. A simple query against each table will give you a fair amount of information about data.

You can go through this link that gives a brief overview of schemas used in AW https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms124894(v=sql.100).aspx

Think of yourself an interviewer and then frame questions that you will be asking the officers/managers of AW. Trust me there are lot of pitfalls if you are a newbie. Like, if you ask the question to business: "What do you want in your datawarehouse?" WRONG. This is your job to figure out.

All the best with exploration.

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I have found this link below which if you follow the link depending on which sample database you are interested, it explains what it is all about:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms124501(v=sql.100).aspx

I have also fouund this ETL (but could not find for other databases):

http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=%20AdventureWorksLTDiagram&referringTitle=AWSchemaDiag

I have also found these exercises:

http://sqlzoo.net/wiki/AdventureWorks