Data Warehousing FAQs – Things that you Must Know
You may be aware that data warehousing is the process of storing the data, and creating a database; however, what you might not know is the fact that this process can prove to be highly beneficial for reporting and analysis. Believe it or not but a lot of businesses have succeed in making the most of it; you can do the same. All you need to do is to familiarize yourself with some of the unknown facts, and become aware of the technicalities.
Perhaps the answers to the following questions would help you in well-versed with the things that you must know:
How can it benefit your business?
To begin with, data warehousing can be your knight in shining armor, especially if you have always had trouble in restructuring the data. Moreover, it would add value to your operational business applications, especially the ones pertaining to CRM (commonly referred to as ‘customer relationship management’). It is worth mentioning that there are plenty of other benefits; these include but are certainly not limited to:
a) Believe it or not but a conventional data warehouse (read: DW) offers consistent codes and descriptions, thereby bringing about a noticeable improvement in the data quality.
b) You can count on a DW for maintaining the data history, especially when the source transaction systems do not serve the purpose.
c) If you have been involved in any kind of merger in the recent past, you must be aware of the technicalities of integrating data from multiple source systems; believe it or not but this process can be really cumbersome. However, with a DW at your disposal, the integration would be more of a cakewalk.
Can it be used for obtaining an efficient I/O?
Contrary to popular belief, you can easily achieve an efficient I/O with a DW. As a matter of fact, all you need to do is to use column-oriented storage techniques, and you are good to go.
What purpose does it serve?
First things first; it allows you to restructure the data, thereby ensuring that the data in question makes sense to your business users. Secondly, it can play a major role in business analytics, especially if you use the column-oriented storage techniques. Believe it or not but a lot of renowned companies have been using it for trend analysis, financial forecasting, and similar activities. Last but not least, unlike the conventional storage mechanisms, it can provide you with a common model for the entire data.
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