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What Is Data Mart?

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88 views4 pages

What Is Data Mart?

Uploaded by

Hemant Gautam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Data Mart

A data mart is a subset of a data warehouse focused on a particular line of business,


department or subject area. Data marts can improve team efficiency, reduce costs and
facilitate smarter tactical business decision-making in enterprises.
Data marts make specific data available to a defined group of users, which allows those users
to quickly access critical insights without wasting time searching through an entire data
warehouse. For example, many companies may have a data mart that aligns with a specific
department in the business, such as finance, sales or marketing.

Benefits of a Data Mart


Data marts are designed to meet the needs of specific groups by having a comparatively
narrow subject of data. And while a data mart can still contain millions of records, its
objective is to provide business users with the most relevant data in the shortest amount of
time.
With its smaller, focused design, a data mart has several benefits to the end user, including
the following:
 Cost-Efficiency:
There are many factors to consider when setting up a data mart, such as the scope,
integrations, and the process to extract, transform, and load (ETL). However, a data
mart typically only incurs a fraction of the cost of a data warehouse.
 More Trustworthy Data
Data marts create a “single source of truth” regarding a certain subject or department.
This gives your teams a collective view of the data and allows them to focus on finding
insights, making decisions, and taking action rather than sharing spreadsheets and
wondering which data is accurate.
 Easier Access To Data
Since data marts hold a subset of data, you can access the data you need with less
effort than dealing with a cluttered data warehouse. Plus, by establishing connections
to the appropriate data sources, you can access live data anytime without waiting for
IT to perform periodic extracts.
 Faster Insights & Decisions
The focused nature of a data mart also allows you to more quickly leverage your
analytics and business intelligence tools because you’re only working with a relevant,
frequently needed data set.
 Easier implementation & maintenance
Unlike data warehouses, which require integration with a wide variety of internal and
external data sources, data marts only contain data essential to the particular
business unit or department. This makes for faster and easier implementation and
maintenance because you’re serving the needs of a specific business team rather than
your entire organization.
 Better support short-term projects
As noted above, you can quickly and cost-effectively establish a data mart, so they are
well-suited for short-term data analysis projects such as determining the
effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
 Better data access control
Data in your mart is partitioned from the broader data warehouse. This gives you the
ability to control data access privileges at a granular level.

Types of Data Marts


There are three types of data marts that differ based on their relationship to the data
warehouse and the respective data sources of each system.
1. Dependent Data Marts
Dependent data marts are partitioned segments within an enterprise data
warehouse. This top-down approach begins with the storage of all business data in
one central location. The newly created data marts extract a defined subset of the
primary data whenever required for analysis.
2. Independent Data Marts
Independent data mart act as a standalone system that doesn't rely on a data
warehouse. Analysts can extract data on a particular subject or business process from
internal or external data sources, process it, and then store it in a data mart repository
until the team needs it.

3. Hybrid data marts


Hybrid data marts combine data from existing data warehouses and other
operational sources. This unified approach leverages the speed and user-friendly
interface of a top-down approach and also offers the enterprise-level integration of
the independent method.
Key Challenges
The key steps and challenges of creating and maintaining data marts include:
 Designing and building the mart.
 Loading source data into the data warehouse and mart.
 Keeping the data in the warehouse and the mart in sync with the continuously
changing source database systems.
 Delivering in an agile way to keep pace with constantly changing business and
analytical requirements.

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