Structure of Data warehouse

A Data-Warehouse is a heterogeneous collection of data sources organized

under a unified schema.

The essential components are discussed below:

1. External Sources: External source is a source from where data is
collected irrespective of the type of data. Data can be structured, semi
structured and unstructured as well.

2. Stage Area: Since the data, extracted from the external sources does not
follow a particular format, so there is a need to validate this data to load
into datawarehouse. For this purpose, it is recommended to use ETL tool.
• E(Extracted): Data is extracted from External data source.

• T(Transform): Data is transformed into the standard format.

• L(Load): Data is loaded into datawarehouse after transforming it into

the standard format.
3. Data-warehouse: After cleansing of data, it is stored in the data
warehouse as central repository. It actually stores the meta data and the
actual data gets stored in the data marts. Note that data warehouse stores
the data in its purest form in this top-down approach.

4. Data Marts: Data mart is also a part of storage component. It stores the
information of a particular function of an organisation which is handled by
 single authority. There can be as many number of data marts in an
organisation depending upon the functions. We can also say that data
mart contains subset of the data stored in data warehouse.

5. Data Mining: The practice of analysing the big data present in data
warehouse is data mining. It is used to find the hidden patterns that are
present in the database or in data warehouse with the help of algorithm of
data mining.

Advantages/ Features/ Benefits/Merits of Data Warehouse (4

mks)
1.A Data Warehouse Saves Time
Since business users can quickly access critical data from a number of sources—all
in one place—they can rapidly make informed decisions on key initiatives. They
won’t waste precious time retrieving data from multiple sources.

Not only that but the business execs can query the data themselves with little or
no support from IT—saving more time and more money. That means the business
users won’t have to wait until IT gets around to generating the reports, and those
hardworking folks in IT can do what they do best—keep the business running.

2. A Data Warehouse Enhances Data Quality and Consistency A data warehouse

implementation includes the conversion of data from numerous source systems
into a common format. Since each data from the various departments is
standardized, each department will produce results that are in line with all the
other departments. So you can have more confidence in the accuracy of your data.
And accurate data is the basis for strong business decisions.

3.A Data Warehouse Provides Historical Intelligence

A data warehouse stores large amounts of historical data so you can analyze
different time periods and trends in order to make future predictions. Such data
typically cannot be stored in a transactional database or used to generate reports
from a transactional system.
4.A Data Warehouse Generates a High ROI
Finally, the piece de resistance—return on investment. Companies that have
implemented data warehouses and complementary BI systems have generated more
revenue and saved more money than companies that haven’t invested in BI systems
and data warehouses.
And that should be reason enough for senior management to jump on the data
warehouse trend.

5.A Data Warehouse Delivers Enhanced Business Intelligence

By providing data from various sources, managers and executives will no longer
need to make business decisions based on limited data or their gut. In addition,
“data warehouses and related BI can be applied directly to business processes
including marketing segmentation, inventory management, financial
management, and sales.”

6. Integrating data from multiple sources;

Data warehouse integrates data from multiple sources such as flat files, relational
databases etc.

7. Reducing cost to access historical data.

a data ware house reduces cost of historical data as It can be accessed using
executing queries
Disadvantages/Demerits of Data Warehouse

(Limitations of using DWH)

1. Extra Report Work

Unquestionably, the bigger the organization, the more data it holds and the extra
time and load the data warehouse runs. The data generated by DWH requires the
involvement of each department in the organization and thus, bothers with extra
report work. Many times, it also involves data from consumers and clients, which
again causes annoyance and trouble of entering excessive data.

2.Inflexibility and homogenization of data

As discussed above in the benefits section, sometime the similarity and

standardization in the data formats lead to inflexibility and homogenization of
data. This further limits the data in terms of establishing relations during
aggregation and difficult to tune for query speed. Meanwhile, the homogenization
also causes loss of data.

3.Ownership Concerns

While warehousing is all about centralizing data at one place for the ease of
analysis and access. It sometimes causes issues to different departments as they
hesitate to share their personal data within a central repository. This also raises
security and ownership concerns for few departments. In this case, organizations
must ensure that the analysis of data is given to trusted individuals within the
enterprise.

4.Demands for large amounts of resources

If not IT support, but data warehousing implementation certainly requires large
amounts of data resources to manage and handle data from multiple sources. This, in
turn, raises cost concerns and cost/benefit ratio for the companies. Nonetheless,
businesses can choose to execute it wisely by optimizing their costs yet generating
best results.

5.Hidden issues consume time

Sometimes, internal sources fueling the data warehouses keep bundling issues
that are undetected for years. For instance, while entering customer data, some
values field accept null values, which may result in incomplete customer data in
the future, even if the data is available.

Question:
Applications/ Uses of Data Warehouse (Where it is used)
1.Banking Industry
In the banking industry, concentration is given to risk management and
policy reversal as well analyzing consumer data, market trends, government
regulations and reports, and more importantly financial decision making.
Most banks also use warehouses to manage the resources available on deck
in an effective manner. Certain banking sectors utilize them for market
research, performance analysis of each product, interchange and exchange
rates, and to develop marketing programs.
Analysis of card holder’s transactions, spending patterns and merchant
classification, all of which provide the bank with an opportunity to introduce
special offers and lucrative deals based on cardholder activity. Apart from
all these, there is also scope for cobranding.

2.Finance Industry
Similar to the applications seen in banking, mainly revolve around
evaluation and trends of customer expenses which aids in maximizing the
profits earned by their clients.

3.Consumer Goods Industry

They are used for prediction of consumer trends, inventory management,
market and advertising research. In-depth analysis of sales and production
is also carried out. Apart from these, information is exchanged business
partners and clientele.

4.Government and Education

The federal government utilizes the warehouses for research in compliance,
whereas the state government uses it for services related to human
resources like recruitment, and accounting like payroll management.
The government uses data warehouses to maintain and analyze tax
records, health policy records and their respective providers, and also
their entire criminal law database is connected to the state’s data
warehouse. Criminal activity is predicted from the patterns and trends,
results of the analysis of historical data associated with past criminals.
Universities use warehouses for extracting of information used for the
proposal of research grants, understanding their student demographics, and
human resource management. The entire financial department of most
universities depends on data warehouses, inclusive of the Financial Aid
department.0

5.Healthcare
One of the most important sector which utilizes data warehouses is the
Healthcare sector. All of their financial, clinical, and employee records are
fed to warehouses as it helps them to strategize and predict outcomes, track
and analyze their service feedback, generate patient reports, share data
with tie-in insurance companies, medical aid services, etc.
6.Hospitality Industry
A major proportion of this industry is dominated by hotel and restaurant
services, car rental services, and holiday home services. They utilize
warehouse services to design and evaluate their advertising and promotion
campaigns where they target customers based on their feedback and travel
pattern

7.Insurance
As the saying goes in the insurance services sector, “Insurance can never be
bought, it can be only be sold”, the warehouses are primarily used to
analyze data patterns and customer trends, apart from maintaining records
of already existing participants. The design of tailor-made customer offers
and promotions is also possible through warehouses.

8.Manufacturing and Distribution Industry

This industry is one of the most important sources of income for any state. A
manufacturing organization has to take several make-or-buy decisions
which can influence the future of the sector, which is why they utilize high-
end OLAP tools as a part of data warehouses to predict market changes,
analyze current business trends, detect warning conditions, view marketing
developments, and ultimately take better decisions.
They also use them for product shipment records, records of product
portfolios, identify profitable product lines, analyze previous data and
customer feedback to evaluate the weaker product lines and eliminate
them.
For the distributions, the supply chain management of products operates
through data warehouses.

9.The Retailers
Retailers serve as middlemen between producers and consumers. It is
important for them to maintain records of both the parties to ensure their
existence in the market.
They use warehouses to track items, their advertising promotions, and the
consumers buying trends. They also analyze sales to determine fast selling
and slow selling product lines and determine their shelf space through a
process of elimination.
10.Services Sector
Data warehouses find themselves to be of use in the service sector for
maintenance of financial records, revenue patterns, customer profiling,
resource management, and human resources.

11.Telephone Industry
The telephone industry operates over both offline and online data burdening
them with a lot of historical data which has to be consolidated and
integrated.
Apart from those operations, analysis of fixed assets, analysis of customer’s
calling patterns for sales representatives to push advertising campaigns,
and tracking of customer queries, all require the facilities of a data
warehouse.

12.Transportation Industry
In the transportation industry, data warehouses record customer data
enabling traders to experiment with target marketing where the marketing
campaigns are designed by keeping customer requirements in mind.
The internal environment of the industry uses them to analyze customer
feedback, performance, manage crews on board as well as analyze
customer financial reports for pricing strategies.