In my new job I am spending a fair amount of time data modeling specifically around Data Warehousing Data modeling.  The team I work on are pretty committed Kimballists meaning we generally follow the dimensional modeling principles outlined by Ralph Kimball.  As with any programming methodology (and likely any methodology period) there is a fair amount of gray area.  That is where both experience and "gut feeling" come into play in making decisions on how to model certain things that don't fit the philosophy very well or perhaps fit multiple parts of the philosophy.

What has surprised is why there aren't more forums out there to discuss this!  I can go Google C# of Java or Oracle or perhaps better examples would be Agile Programming or Test Driven Development and find a host of forums to look at, but data modeling or dimensional modeling forums specifically seem to be very few and far between.  It surprises me after all these years of Kimball espousing the philosophy etc... that he hasn't made available forums for discussion to happen etc...  It would be fascinating to pose problems and see the community's opinions and to respond to other's questions as well.  Sounds like a project in the making!  Anyone interested or know if a good place already exists (not sense reinventing the wheel!)

Just having moved to Salt Lake and working downtown I have missed the nice 3D models that are available of Phoenix.  Well today the Virtual Earth team announced the addition of 3D imagery for Salt Lake and Provo so below are a couple of snapshots I clipped while navigating around. 

Here is a picture of downtown Salt Lake with a little note in the the bottom left pointing out the office building that I work it.

And here is my beloved BYU with a little annotation pointing out the season ticket location that my mother-in-law has that we got to enjoy this year!

You can also take the 3D Tour that I made that gives you a view of Provo and then moves to Temple Square - try it out - it is a pretty cool feature.  You can even record the tour and save that off.

In comparing features of mapping programs.  Virtual Earth is great in how 3D and 2D can just go back and forth in the browser.  With Google Maps you only get 2D to get 3D you have to go into Google Earth.  You do have Street View in Google Maps which is interesting - I prefer the Bird's Eye feature that Live Maps has over Street View though.  Google Maps has the ability for you to click and re-route your directions (Yahoo which doesn't have any of the other whizbang things we just talked about but did just add similar re-routing capability) which is very, very cool (Live Maps you really need to add that!).  In trying out the touring capabilities the Live Maps capability seemed easier to work with compared to Google Earth.

Since the iPhone release which generated I think iTunes 7.3 over the last couple of months we have had 7.3.1 and 7.3.2 and 7.4 and now 7.5.  Each required reinstalls (including a reinstall of Quicktime???) and the size continues to grow - last night when prompted to install 7.5 it downloaded and installed 69 MB or something like that - I remember 7 being in the range of high 40s.  Anybody ever heard of a patch?  I am a software developer so I understand a little about the distribution of software.  I just don't get why point releases aren't handled as patches - going from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8 I completely understand a reinstall, but not for point releases.