CIS Chapter 7: Data Warehouses

Data Warehouse

- Data warehouses extend the transformation of data into information - In the 1990's executives became less concerned with the day-to-day business operations and more concerned with overall business functions - The data warehouse provided the ability to support decision making without disrupting the day-to-day operations

Data Warehouse def.

A logical collection of information - gathered from many different operational databases - that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks - The primary purpose of a data warehouse is to aggregate information throughout an organization into a single repository for decision-making purposes

Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL)

A process that extracts information from internal and external databases, transforms the information using a common set of enterprise definitions, and loads the information into a data warehouse

Information cleansing or scrubbing

A process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information Ex: Missing Records, Redundant Records, Missing Key or Required Data, Erroneous Relationships or References, Inaccurate Data

Data Mart

Contains a subset of data warehouse information