| Data warehousing in many ways has become an | | | | This ability to analyze longer time periods to spot |
| industry buzzword that seems to promise much and | | | | trends makes data warehousing particularly helpful to |
| deliver little. A good part of this is due to the often lofty | | | | marketing departments. In fact, its most immediate |
| and nebulous benefits that data warehousing vendors | | | | benefits are actually realized by those responsible for |
| tout. What most businesses really want to understand | | | | marketing. Another way data warehousing makes this |
| is can data warehousing help them and if so, in what | | | | possible is by allowing for the merging of data from |
| concrete way. | | | | external data sources for analysis. You would not |
| Offload Resource Intensive Processing | | | | want to merge this external data in your transaction |
| One of the ways that data warehousing can help your | | | | processing system but in a data warehouse, external |
| business is by offloading the resource intensive | | | | data may provide better intelligence about your |
| processes of generating reports onto database | | | | customers. For example, you might use purchased |
| systems that are not also responsible for real time | | | | mailing lists to find which of your customers recently |
| transaction processing. I have seen many web | | | | obtained new mortgages. If you marketed products |
| applications completely bogged down by the | | | | that were of interest to new home owners, this would |
| management reports being generated by users. Often | | | | be a highly useful metric. |
| companies solve this by throwing bigger and more | | | | Restrict Data Access |
| expensive hardware at the database when offloading | | | | Another way that data warehousing can help your |
| the reporting functions would allow them to gain more | | | | business is by segregating roles and permissions in a |
| benefit for less cost. This also makes it possible for | | | | more concrete way. You may have employees that |
| users to write ad hoc reporting queries without the | | | | should have access to data for reporting purposes but |
| concern that they might bring the transaction | | | | perhaps they should not have permissions or access |
| processing system down from a poorly written query. | | | | to the transaction processing system. A data |
| Preserve Historical Data | | | | warehouse makes it easy to separate those users |
| Data warehousing allows reporting systems to | | | | that only need reporting access versus those that |
| analyze and report on a larger volume of historical | | | | have access to "real time" transaction data. |
| data. Most transaction processing systems periodically | | | | Data warehousing is one of those technologies that is |
| purge transaction data to save space and maintain | | | | often poorly communicated. In a concrete way, data |
| performance. Moving this data into a data warehouse | | | | warehousing can help a business by providing better |
| allows your business to generate reports over a larger | | | | marketing intelligence and by segregating the data for |
| period than what may be saved in the transaction | | | | reporting from the data used for real time transaction |
| processing systems. This allows you to spot trends | | | | processing. This is a strong benefit and one that is |
| over a longer period or analyze the state of various | | | | simple to understand. Why data warehouse vendors |
| transactions at a point in time. | | | | could not just say so, I will never understand. |
| Merge External Data | | | | |