A Data Warehouse It is a database used for analysis and reporting in organizations. It is the central repository of the information of the company that integrates the data of all the areas or departments of this. This means that the information that can be obtained from a Data Warehouse it is trustworthy and reliable information for decision making. The Data Warehouse stores historical information of the company therefore it is very useful to generate trend reports in which the information is shown year after year.
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The advantages of having a Data Warehouse are:
- You can have a consolidated database from which you can obtain reliable information instead of several sources of information with different and raw data.
- Stores historical data unlike transactional systems.
- It integrates data from different sources of information which reduces the times of consultations for management.
- Improve data quality by documenting and structuring information.
- Restructure the information so that it is useful to the end user. By synthesizing the data, the levels of complexity decrease.
The information entered into the Data Warehouse must go through the ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) process. This process is explained in more detail in another article. As mentioned above, the information entered into the Data Warehouse must be integrated and clean, an objective that is achieved through the ETL process.
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Among the disadvantages of a Data Warehouse are:
- Its high cost of implementation and maintenance
- It is only applicable to large companies since the effort to create a Data Warehouse would be much higher than the benefits obtained.
