which should be a better career option - software testing or data warehousing?

Answer 1

It depends actually.

Software testing will always be around as new applications are being built. There is some skill required as you will basically be running user processes that are not in the manual (if the manual for the application is written at all). But generally, basic computing skill is all that's required.

Data warehousing on the other hand is tricky at best and testing. People who intend to go build a data warehouse are suggested to have the basic discipline of understanding operational/transactional processes and translating it to the data. It really more of translating a business definition to a technical definition. Business value "A" is the aggregate of column "W" divided by "X" if condition "Y" is satisfied else "Z". Most enterprise systems define these sort of stuff on the fly and is not translated to any ounce of definition on the systems.

Additionally, what is record by record transaction to SQL developers will be quite rare on data warehouses. DW's are more akin to joins between BILLION record tables against another MILLION.

From personal experience, I have a team of sql programmers working on a specific portion of a data warehouse. Their discipline is more on the transactional query and the exactness, to the dot accuracy of the database. Data warehousing on the other hand gives you that lea way BUT would force you to think of the process and how that translates to the database. Oh, it will be nice to have a really accurate data warehouse but that is highly improbable to happen.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Data warehousing careers are a spectrum of specialized database administration, systems administration, meta-data managers, network data performance, business analysts, front end developers, statistical modelers, ETL developers etc.

Answer 2

Data Warehousing ..

Testing is a dead end job that will soon be exported to India/China where they can hire PhD's to do testing for half the wages they pay to morons in UK.