Book excerpt: Develop a custom, agile data warehousing and business intelligence architecture Empower your users and drive better decision making across your enterprise with detailed instructions and best practices from an expert developer and trainer. The Data Warehouse Mentor: Practical Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Insights shows how to plan, design, construct, and administer an integrated end-to-end DW/BI solution. Learn how to choose appropriate components, build an enterprise data model, configure data marts and data warehouses, establish data flow, and mitigate risk. Change management, data governance, and security are also covered in this comprehensive guide. Understand the components of BI and data warehouse systems Establish project goals and implement an effective deployment plan Build accurate logical and physical enterprise data models Gain insight into your company's transactions with data mining Input, cleanse, and normalize data using ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) techniques Use structured input files to define data requirements Employ top-down, bottom-up, and hybrid design methodologies Handle security and optimize performance using data governance tools Robert Laberge is the founder of several Internet ventures and a principle consultant for the IBM Industry Models and Assets Lab, which has a focus on data warehousing and business intelligence solutions.