Data Warehousing. MarketCheese

Data Warehouse is a reliable storage of enterprise information in electronic form. Data warehouses are created for the purpose of collecting and storing historical information that can be recalled and viewed. Such data can be analyzed and provide useful information for use in the future activities of the company. This is very useful for business intelligence. Business intelligence helps to structure information about previous successes and failures for further application in strategic decisions.

How Data Warehousing works

The introduction of computer systems in enterprises led to the creation, storage and delivery of business documents electronically. As a result, there was a need for a data warehouse, which was introduced by IBM researchers Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy in 1988.

The main purpose of data warehouses is to compare data, analyze the historical actions of the company, giving an overall picture of the company's activities. Users of data warehouses have access to historical data. They can request and analyze information from transactional sources.

All information that has ever entered the data warehouse cannot be changed or corrected. This data has to be easily accessible, reliable, and easy to use.

Maintaining the Data Warehouse

Certain actions are required to maintain the data warehouse. The first thing to do is to collect data from several sources. Then, the data is filtered and checked for mistakes, the data is cleaned. After that, the information is converted from database format to data warehouse format. Next, the data is sorted, consolidated and summarized for easier use. Over time, the data warehouse is added with new information.

Data warehouses are created according to certain rules. These rules are described in W. H. Inmon's book Creating a Data Warehouse. This practical guide was first published in 1990. It has been republished many times. In the modern world, businesses can use cloud storage software services from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle and others.

Data Warehousing vs. databases

A data warehouse is time-structured data. For example, a data warehouse contains all customer addresses for the last several years, while a database contains only the actual one for today.

A database is not equal to a data warehouse. A database is a collection of information coming in and being updated in real time, a system of recent data.

Data mining

In general, companies need data warehouses to store and analyze information. This data helps to identify patterns for future business development.

The right data warehouse helps many departments in a company work by providing information to each other. For example, data from the sales department can be useful to the marketing department. Sales campaigns can be improved on the basis of this information.

Advantages and disadvantages of Data Warehouses

A data warehouse is a company's information that can be tracked over time. This information can be analyzed to make better decisions and to gain a competitive advantage for the business.

However, maintaining the data warehouse creates routine tasks for employees. This exhausts the company's resources.

The Corporate Finance Institute identifies these potential pros and cons of a data warehouse maintaining:

Pros	Cons
It helps to analyze the company's historical data to develop future strategy and decisions. It is an archive of data from the company's past. It helps the company's departments to share data.	Data warehouse creation and maintenance takes a lot of time and effort. A human factor can cause mistakes that affect the integrity and usefulness of the data. Information from multiple sources can have inconsistencies, which can lead to data loss.