What is Data Warehouse

What is Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is a collection of technologies aimed at enabling the knowledge worker (executive, manager, analyst) to make better and faster decision. It is expected to have the right information in the right place at the right time with the right cost in order to support the right decision.

 

 

 

Different between Operational Database Systems (OLTP) and Data Warehouses (OLAP)

Why have separate Data Ware house?

A major reason for such a separation is to help promote the high performance of both system (OLTP & OLAP).

 

 

 

An operational database is designed and tuned from known tasks and workloads. It mostly take small and short transaction and query. But Data Warehouse queries are often complex. Processing OLAP queries in operational databases would substantially degrade the performance of operational tasks.

 

 

 

Concurrency control and recovery mechanisms, if applied for such OLAP operation, may jeopardize the execution of concurrent transactions and thus substantially reduce the throughput of an OLAP system

 

 

 

Finally, the separation of operational databases from data warehouses is based on the different structures, contents and uses of the data in these two systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different Information Worlds

One of the most important assets of any organization is its information. This asset is almost always kept by an organization in two forms: the operational systems of record and the data warehouse.

 

 

 

l           The operational systems are where the data is put in, and the data warehouse is where we get the data out.

l           The users of an operational system turn the wheels of the organization.

l           The users of a data warehouse, on the other hand, watch the wheels of the organization turn.

Goals of a Data Warehouse

l           The data warehouse must make an organization’s information easily accessible.

l           The data warehouse must present the organization’s information consistently.

l           The data warehouse must be adaptive and resilient to change.

l           The data warehouse must be a secure bastion that protects our information assets.

l           The data warehouse must serve as the foundation for improved decision making.

l           The business community must accept the data warehouse if it is to be deemed successful.

 

 

 

Role of Data Warehouse Manager

Data warehouse manager is publisher of the right data.

l           Understand your users by business area, job responsibilities, and computer tolerance.

l           Determine the decisions the business users want to make with the help of the data warehouse.

l           Identify the “best” users who make effective, high-impact decisions using the data warehouse.

l           Find potential new users and make them aware of the data warehouse.

l           Choose the most effective, actionable subset of the data to present in the data warehouse, drawn from the vast universe of possible data in your organization.

l           Make the user interfaces and applications simple and template-driven, explicitly matching to the users’ cognitive processing profiles.

l           Make sure the data is accurate and can be trusted, labeling it consistently across the enterprise.

l           Continuously monitor the accuracy of the data and the content of the delivered reports.

l           Search for new data sources, and continuously adapt the data warehouse to changing data profiles, reporting requirements, and business priorities.

l           Take a portion of the credit for the business decisions made using the data warehouse, and use these successes to justify your staffing, software, and hardware expenditures.

l           Publish the data on a regular basis.

l           Maintain the trust of business users.

l           Keep your business users, executive sponsors, and boss happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Component of Data Warehouse

 

 

 

There are four separate and distinct components to be considered as we explore the data warehouse environment—operational source systems, data staging area, data presentation area, and data access tools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key architectural requirement for the data staging area is that it is off-limits to business users and does not provide query and presentation services.