A business that makes intelligent decisions with its data stands apart in the marketplace.© Data Warehousing You have business goals. You have choices on how to make those goals happen. You need the right information to help you make the best decisions. A data warehouse (DW) plays a vital role in bringing the right data together to give you the information you need about your business. A data warehouse forms a large part of the Business Intelligence Lifecycle. What is a Data Warehouse? A data warehouse is first and foremost a business process, not simply a technical solution. It requires sponsorship from the highest levels in the organization, because it changes the way the organization works. In a nutshell, a data warehouse is a database which brings together a variety of data sources from inside and outside the enterprise into one cohesive collection, to answer vital business questions and help make the best business decisions. Teaming the warehouse with analytic solutions gives you insights you would find difficult or impossible to generate any other way. The data warehouse is a corporate asset which must be actively managed from a business value perspective. How does a data warehouse answer questions? Data warehouses focus on summarized data, because seeing patterns in your business is easier when you get up above the detail. However, summaries can also hide important components, so data warehouses and associated analytic solutions are designed to let you "drill down" into the details. A unique characteristic of data warehouses and analytic solutions is the ability to look at data from different perspectives, or "dimensions". This is important when you are trying to find business relationships that you might not have seen otherwise. Building a data warehouse While it's not practical to build one massive database for all your data, it is critical to think in terms of enterprise-wide, common definitions and common structures. Why? Because you view your business as one whole. If several departments within your company can't agree who the customer is, for instance, how can you hope to answer important issues around customer retention, customer value and customer focus? Having a data warehouse is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. The warehouse must change as your business changes, as your data needs change, as your business priorities change. The major steps in a data warehouse initiative are outlined in this description of the Data Warehouse Cycle. Data Warehouse or Data Marts? You may hear people talk about the benefits of data marts over data warehouses. What's the difference? A data mart is a smaller, more targeted slice of your enterprise data warehouse. Data marts are often created to support a particular function or department, or to improve performance, or as a short-term step in a long-term strategy. The key to creating data marts is conformance - data definitions used in each mart must be identical to the "master definition" for the enterprise. For instance, if the Finance data mart and the Sales data mart each use customer information, then the customer codes and other customer fields must mean the same thing across both data marts. Deciding when and where to use data marts is part of your data warehouse strategy that must be determined very early on in the planning stages of your project. [Home] [Data Warehousing] [Business Intelligence] [Services] [Company] [Contact Us] Copyright © 2000-2003 Business Decisions Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Copyright Last update:  May 21, 2003