CHAPTER 8 ACCESSING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION ( DATA WAREHOUSE )

CHAPTER 8

8.1 Describe the roles and purpose of data warehouses and data marts in an organization.

               

                A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data, designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. Data warehousing arises in an organization’s need for reliable, consolidated, unique and integrated reporting and analysis of its data, at different levels of aggregation. The process of organizing information in such way as to create data-based knowledge is called Data Warehousing. The software products that present this knowledge to users are sometimes called Business Intelligence Tools. Data Mart is a database that has the same characteristics as a data warehouse but usually smaller and is focused on the data for one division or one workgroup within an enterprise.

8.2 Compare the multidimensional nature of data warehouses (and data marts) with the two-dimensional nature of databases

                Multi-Dimensional Analysis is generally used in statistics, econometrics and other related fields and the results of this kind of analysis used in the different fields can be further applied to different fields like business enterprise. Multi-dimensional analysis actually is a process which groups data into two basic categories which are the data dimension category and the measurement category.

                Two dimensional data sets are also called panel data in other disciplines. Logically, any two or higher dimensional data sets could actually be considered as multidimensional data but the term multidimensional data tends to be applied on data sets only with three or more dimensions.

8.3 Identify the importance of ensuring the cleanliness of information throughout an organization.

                If an organization is using a data warehouse or data mart, low quality information will definitely have a negative impact on its ability to make the right decisions. To increase the quality of organizational information and thus the effectiveness of decision making, businesses use information cleansing which is a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information.

8.4 Explain the relationship between business intelligence and a data warehouse.

                Data warehouse and business intelligence are two terms that are a common source of confusion, both inside and outside of the information technology(IT) industry. Data warehousing refers to the technology used to actually create a repository data. Business Intelligence refers to the tools and applications used in the analysis and interpretation of data. These two elements have grown substantially and are forecast to experience continued growth into the future.