DATA WAREHOUSE

DATA WAREHOUSING

The type of information needed for strategic decision making is different from that available from operational systems. We need a new type of system environment for the purpose of providing strategic information for analysis, discerning trends, and monitoring performance.
Let us examine the desirable features and processing requirements of this new type of system environment. Let us also consider the advantages of this type of system environment designed for strategic information.

A New Type of System Environment

The desired features of the new type of system environment are:

Database designed for analytical tasks.
Data from multiple applications.
Easy to use and conducive to long interactive sessions by users.
Read-intensive data usage.
Direct interaction with the system by the users without IT assistance.
Content updated periodically and stable.
Content to include current and historical data.
Ability for users to run queries and get results online.
Ability for users to initiate reports.

Processing Requirements in the New Environment

Most of the processing in the new environment for strategic information will have to be
analytical. There are four levels of analytical processing requirements:

1. Running of simple queries and reports against current and historical data.
2. Ability to perform “what if ” analysis is many different ways.
3. Ability to query, step back, analyze, and then continue the process to any desired
length.
4. Spot historical trends and apply them for future results.

Business Intelligence at the Data Warehouse

This new system environment that users desperately need to obtain strategic information
happens to be the new paradigm of data warehousing. Enterprises that are building data
warehouses are actually building this new system environment. This new environment is
kept separate from the system environment supporting the day-to-day operations. The data
warehouse essentially holds the business intelligence for the enterprise to enable strategic
decision making. The data warehouse is the only viable solution.

At a high level of interpretation, the data warehouse contains critical measurements of

the business processes stored along business dimensions. For example, a data warehouse

might contain units of sales, by product, day, customer group, sales district, sales region,

and promotion. Here the business dimensions are product, day, customer group, sales district,

sales region, and promotion.

From where does the data warehouse get its data? The data is derived from the operational

systems that support the basic business processes of the organization. In between

the operational systems and the data warehouse, there is a data staging area. In this staging

area, the operational data is cleansed and transformed into a form suitable for placement

in the data warehouse for easy retrieval.

DATA WAREHOUSE DEFINED

We have reached the strong conclusion that data warehousing is the only viable solution

for providing strategic information. We arrived at this conclusion based on the functions

of the new system environment called the data warehouse. So, let us try to come up with a

functional definition of the data warehouse.

The data warehouse is an informational environment that

Provides an integrated and total view of the enterprise
Makes the enterprise’s current and historical information easily available for decision
making
Makes decision-support transactions possible without hindering operational systems
Renders the organization’s information consistent
Presents a flexible and interactive source of strategic information