What is a Datawarehouse system?

Question

what is a Datawarehouse system?
Regards,
Bharath Mohan B

Answer 1

A data warehouse system serves primarily to stage information from various data
sources. This data and information, and the reports resulting from them, constitute
the basis of successful business processes within a company. This type of system
can be used by all employees in a company (that is, by managers, departmental
heads, and all other employees).
The information is staged in various forms including personalized reports, freely
definable queries, and predefined reports. Recipients of information can use these
reporting and analysis functions to analyze the data for deviations and significant
facts. In the Planning and Campaign Management areas, a data warehouse is used
to carry out data analysis. The following issues might arise when using a data
warehouse in the Retail Sector area:
• Checking ranges of goods in order to identify slow moving items and big
sellers
• Analyzing regional locations to investigate the profitability of different
branches
• Investigating the effectiveness of market analyses
• Evaluating customer surveys and complaints
• Analyzing warehouse stock levels
• Analyzing shopping carts using cash register receipts
A concrete query might be:
• What were the sales volumes for the Cosmetics, Electrical Goods, and
Household Goods departments in the years 2005 and 2006 in New York
and Washington, DC?
In brief, a data warehouse can:
• Pool data from different, mostly heterogeneous sources
• Overcome this heterogeneity on different levels (system, schema, and data)
• Stage data in the form required by the user
Decision-makers urgently need reliable information from Production, Purchasing,
Sales and Distribution, Finance, and Human Resources departments. They require
an up-to-date and comprehensive picture of each individual business area and of
the business as a whole. This places considerable demands on data staging from
the underlying data sources.
The information must be stored in a homogeneous and consistent form at a central
location where it can be called up. Therefore, modern data warehouses require a
separate database that an independent application environment can use to provide
the required services objectively.
Efficient analysis techniques with powerful multi-dimensional visualization are
indispensable on the presentation side of the data warehouse. The system must be
able to cope with the information needs of the various user groups.
The demands made on the source systems are not so high. What is needed here
is an economic and comprehensive preparation of the data that is required by
the data warehouse.
The following demands are made on a data warehouse:
• Standardized structuring and presentation of all company information
• An easy-to-use, single point of access to all company information
• Sophisticated business reporting methods for self-service analysis at all levels
• Fast and cost-effective installation
• A high performance environment
• Data staging from a heterogeneous environment
• Release of source systems and IT organization
• Data access independent of the source system
• Analysis of data over a specific period of time, and the storage of historical
information (time-dependent master data)