Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Definition
A Data Warehouse:
Is a repository for collecting, standardizing, and summarizing snapshots of transactional data contained in an organizations operations or production systems provides a historical perspective of information is most often, but not exclusively, used for decision support applications and business information queries can be more than one database Is not a new concept
Another Definition
Decision Support:
is a set of tools to easily access data is becoming a critical business tool is usually graphically oriented is empowering end users with tools to access vital business information is moving lots of data down to the end user workstation is a rapidly expanding area because of data warehousing efforts and projects
Why a warehouse?
For analysis and decision support, end users
require access to data captured and stored in an organizations operational or production systems
multiple platforms, in multiple data structures, with multiple names, and probably created using different business rules
Financial
Interesting Statistics
85% of the Fortune 1000 companies have, are
pursuing a data warehouse strategy in the next three years (Meta Group)
Application
Production Files
End users denied direct access to production files Snapshots or copies of production files are made available instead Solution: Provide end users access to production systems
Production Files
Snapshot File
Application
Production Files
Snapshot Files
c
Purchased company system
Purchased Package
Document
A
Desktop computer
Document Document
Mainf rame
Serv er or Midreange
4GL
Desktop computer
Data Characteristics
Type
Data Use Level of detail Currency Longevity Stability
Production
Operational Detailed Real time, Latest value Relatively brief Dynamic Application wide Capture/update Coded
Warehouse
Mgt Reporting Summary Multiple generations Forever Static Enterprise wide Read only Decoded
Scope of definition
Data Operations Data values
Product
Week
Month customer
Ty pe
time
marke t
District Region
IMS
Mainframe Applications
M anage me nt Re porting Sale s/M arke ting Custome r Re lations Re se rv e Analysis Risk Analysis
DB2/2
PC Applications
???
Extract Programs Data Cleansers/Scrubbers Translators/Transformers Timing Tools Data Loading File Transfer
Reserv es
Customers
Rates
Policies
External Sources
Claims Premiums
DB/6000
Midrange
DB/400
Explorers
Dont know what they want Search on a random basis, non-repetitively Frequently finds nothing, but when they do, there are huge rewards
Farmers
Know what they want Non random searches, finds frequent flakes of gold Finds small amounts of data
Data Mining
Drilling down into databases with tools to find specific anomolies