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What is Data Warehousing?

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A data Warehouse is not a storage closet, room or building. A data warehouse is a database. This database is designed, created, and maintained to house important information about a business in a manner that can be easily retrieved for reports and used by decision makers to guide the business in the long term. Data warehousing is different than a digital backup of all a company’s information in that only certain sets of information will be maintained for future use.

Data warehousing is not intended for current information such as payroll reports, employee records, or the active balance sheet. Rather, data warehousing is designed to make archived records that come from a variety of digital formats more easily accessible. Records from spreadsheets, word processing, and other records must all be accessible in one format to aid in future extractions of relevant data. Records stored in the data warehouse must be prepared before being added to the database so that no matter what format the original information was created in, it can be extracted and collated into reports of current value. This process is achieved by creating like values within all programs that are recognizable by the extracting software.

For a data warehouse to be an effective tool, there must be regular uploads of information so that everything in the warehouse is included up to a certain date or reporting period. Ideally, all of a company’s past data should be available, however, most companies utilize a system whereby records are prioritized and only certain information is maintained for future use. Each company must decide before beginning a data warehouse which records will most likely be of use to them in the future.

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