Virtual University of Pakistan

Data Warehousing
Lecture-2
Introduction and Background
Ahsan Abdullah
Assoc. Prof. & Head
Center for Agro-Informatics Research
www.nu.edu.pk/cairindex.asp
FAST National University of Computers & Emerging Sciences, Islamabad

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Introduction and Background

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 Why a Data Warehouse (DWH)?
 Data recording and storage is growing.

 History is excellent predictor of the future.

 Gives total view of the organization.

 Intelligent decision-support is required for

decision-making.

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Reason-1: Why a Data Warehouse?
 Data Sets are growing.
How Much Data is that?
1 MB 220 or 106 bytes Small novel – 31/2 Disk
Paper rims that could fill the back of
1 GB 230 or 109 bytes
a pickup van
50,000 trees chopped and converted
1 TB 240 or 1012 bytes
into paper and printed
Academic research libraries across
2 PB 1 PB = 250 or 1015 bytes
the U.S.
All words ever spoken by human
5 EB 1 EB = 260 or 1018 bytes
beings

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Reason-1: Why a Data Warehouse?
 Size of Data Sets are going up .
 Cost of data storage is coming down .
 The amount of data average business collects
and stores is doubling every year

 Total hardware and software cost to store and

manage 1 Mbyte of data
 1990: ~ $15
 2002: ~ ¢15 (Down 100 times)
 By 2007: < ¢1 (Down 150 times)
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Reason-1: Why a Data Warehouse?
 A Few Examples
 WalMart: 24 TB
 France Telecom: ~ 100 TB
 CERN: Up to 20 PB by 2006
 Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC):
500TB

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 Caution!

A Warehouse of Data
is NOT a
Data Warehouse

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 Caution!

Size
is NOT
Everything

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Reason-2: Why a Data Warehouse?

 Businesses demand Intelligence (BI).

 Complex questions from integrated data.
 “Intelligent Enterprise”

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Reason-2: Why a Data Warehouse?
DBMS Approach
List of all items that were sold last
month?

List of all items purchased by Tariq

Majeed?

The total sales of the last month

grouped by branch?

How many sales transactions

occurred during the month of
January?
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Reason-2: Why a Data Warehouse?
Intelligent Enterprise
Which items sell together? Which
items to stock?

Where and how to place the items?

What discounts to offer?

How best to target customers to

increase sales at a branch?

Which customers are most likely to

respond to my next promotional
campaign, and why?
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Reason-3: Why a Data Warehouse?
 Businesses want much more…
 What happened?
 Why it happened? Stages of
Data
 What will happen? Warehouse

 What is happening?
 What do you want to happen?
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 What is a Data Warehouse?

A complete repository of historical

corporate data extracted from
transaction systems that is
available for ad-hoc access by
knowledge workers.

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What is a Data Warehouse?
Complete repository
History
Transaction System
Ad-Hoc access
Knowledge workers

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What is a Data Warehouse?
Transaction System
 Management Information System (MIS)
 Could be typed sheets (NOT transaction
system)

Ad-Hoc access
 Dose not have a certain access pattern.
 Queries not known in advance.
 Difficult to write SQL in advance.

Knowledge workers
 Typically NOT IT literate (Executives, Analysts, Managers).
 NOT clerical workers. 15

 Decision makers. DWH-Ahsan Abdullah

Another View of a DWH

Subject
Oriented

Integrated

Time
Variant

Non
Volatile

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