Bill Inmon vs. Ralph Kimball

In the data warehousing field, we often hear about discussions on where a person / organization's philosophy falls into Bill Inmon's camp or into Ralph Kimball's camp. We describe below the difference between the two.

Bill Inmon's paradigm: Data warehouse is one part of the overall business intelligence system. An enterprise has one data warehouse, and data marts source their information from the data warehouse. In the data warehouse, information is stored in 3rd normal form.

Ralph Kimball's paradigm: Data warehouse is the conglomerate of all data marts within the enterprise. Information is always stored in the dimensional model.