CHAPTER 8 : ACCESSING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATA WAREHOUSE

A data warehouse has the ability to address a wide variety of phenomena.  A faculty

member may ask, “How can I modify my instruction to help my students learn to write more

effective essays?”  A manager in the Department of Human Resources may ask, “What kind of

training or orientation is necessary for new employees?”  Individuals from administration may ask,

“Are students who attend classes full-time more likely to succeed academically than those who

take classes on a part-time basis?”  Each of these questions requires more information about the

situation in order to conduct research.  This information originates from the data warehouse.

 A data warehouse is a storehouse of an organization’s historical data.  Information from

operational systems is extracted and imported into the data warehouse on a regular basis.  As a

result, complex inquiries, or queries, can be conducted through the data warehouse with minimal

interruptions to the operational systems.  The imported data is read-only and only adds to the data

existing in the data warehouse.  With greater amounts of data, the value of the data warehouse to

the user increases, since analyses looking over a longer period of time become possible.  When a

user query is submitted to the warehouse, all relevant historical data addressing that query is

readily available and current to support in the decision-making.