In Business Intelligence (BI), Data Warehouse refers to the place where are stored all the relevant information for decision-making in business.
As opposed to a simple database, data warehouse does not just gather data, it crosses them in order to identify trends, links, reports and findings dedicated to better guide decision makers. Also, data warehouse is useful to perform the optimization of data, that is to say, to exploit the maximum data in order to derive the best possible results and to benefit the organization which one works.
How does a data warehouse work?
The actual description of a data warehouse’s operating principles and algorithms can take thousands upon thousands of pages of manuals. The very basic map of a data warehouse is what is called the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. It consists of the data sources, data integration frameworks and online analytical processing (OLAP) modules that begin the analytical process by reformatting data and making it possible to integrate information coming from different sources, and the actual main data warehouse database storing all of the data both historically and in ‘live’ mode.
If the database is constructed smoothly and with the end user in mind, the decision makers at different levels do not need to see and wade through the raw data from the original sources - all of the pertinent information they require in their work can be easily and quickly found in the data warehouse.
What are the benefits of making use of a data warehouse?
If executed correctly, a data warehouse makes everyone’s lives simpler while making the information more reliable, more relevant in the longer term, and more usable by filtering out the situations where the end users would have been compelled to, metaphorically speaking, compare apples to oranges.
Preservation of historical data (even if it were deleted from the original source), reformatting of data into a more user-friendly and intelligible state, and the increased opportunity for data cleanup and flagging are all streamlined. It’s no wonder that the idea has been picked up on by various businesses and organizations throughout the world - data optimization just makes good sense.
What is the added value of the data warehouse?
Data warehouse provides multiple benefits to companies that decide to use it in order to operate their data. Indeed, data warehouses are used to solve problems by linking conflicting information, for example, or pointing locations that require corrections or improvements. These techniques include using these IT tools to detect fraud by crossing several data.
Data warehouse allows decision makers to save time and money by providing analysis and fast and accurate statistical reports, to access data quickly and make fair and realistic sales forecasts or the next turnover.
To learn more about the features and benefits of database and data warehouse, do not hesitate to contact experts Thoransoft.