**Newbie - please be gentle**
I realize many books could be written in response to this question. I obviously don't expect that. I'm just hoping a few of you can point me towards some documentation, blog entries, etc. that can get me on my way.
I come from the row-oriented, single server (non-MPP) DW world. I'm used to creating dimensional models, sometimes 3nf ODSs, MDM dbs, etc. and traditional ETL processes using tools like Informatica and SSIS to do full and incremental loads of data from a variety of sources including flat files, XML, web services, and primarily relational sources such as Oracle and SQL Server.
I'm currently evaluating Vertica for a large organization looking to build their first DW. They have very large data volumes, most of which are coming from relational sources such as Oracle and SQL Server as well as social media sources such as Facebook and Twitter and click stream data from a number of web sites.
I'm looking for help in understanding best practices for things like table/projection design and ETL/ELT. I'm guessing that dimensional modeling doesn't really apply here since its design is heavily driven by the need to make row-oriented databases perform well in an analytic environment - an issue that is addressed by the nature of column store technology such as Vertica.
As for ETL/ELT, it appears that Vertica most likely has a much different loading paradigm than what I'm used to. I'm used to extracting data from sources, transforming it in memory, and then persisting it to a row-oriented relational source. It seems like Vertica works better with flat files/COPY, transform in Vertica, then load to destination table.
My above assumptions might be completely off. Just seems like I'm going to get myself in trouble if I try to do what I'm used to with a Vertica implementation and looking for some guidance on how to have a successful evaluation and hopefully production implementation of what seems to be an awesome product.
Thank you!
