Chapter 4

Data Warehousing

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 Outline
• Definition of Data Warehouse

• Reasons for creating Data Marts

• Benefits and characteristics of Data Warehouse

• Reasons for need of data warehousing

• Operational and Informational Systems

• Data Warehouse vs Data Mart

• Types of Systems Used

• Data warehouse architectures

• List four steps of data reconciliation

• Design a data mart

• Star Schema 2
 Definition of Data Warehouse
• It is a huge central database that accepts, stores and maintain
data from different sources and locations.
• Disparate sources may use different formats and technologies.

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 Definition of Data Mart
• A data mart is a simple form of a data warehouse
that is focused on a single subject (or functional
area), such as sales, finance or marketing.
• Data marts are small slices of the data
warehouse.
• Data marts are often built and controlled by a
single department within an organization.
• Given their single-subject focus, data marts
usually draw data from only a few sources.
• The sources could be internal operational
systems, a central data warehouse, or external
data. 4
 Reasons for creating a data mart
• Easy access to frequently needed data
• Creates collective view by a group of users
• Improves end-user response time
• Ease of creation
• Lower cost than implementing a full data
warehouse
• Potential users are more clearly defined than
in a full data warehouse
• Contains only business essential data and is
less cluttered.
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 Benefits of Data Warehouse
• Collect data from multiple sources into a single database so a
single query engine can be used to present data.
• Maintain data history, even if the source transaction systems
do not.
• Integrate data from multiple source systems, enabling a
central view across the enterprise.
• Improve data quality by flagging or even fixing bad data.
• Present the organization's information consistently (constantly
and reliably).
• Provide a single common data model for all data of interest
regardless of the data's source.
• Restructure the data so that it makes sense to the business
users.
• Making decision–support queries are easier to write.
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Example of using a Data Warehouse

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 Characteristics of Data Warehouse
• A data warehouse is a system used for reporting and
data analysis.
• Integrating data from one or more disparate sources
creates a central repository of data, a data
warehouse (DW).
• Data warehouses store current and historical data
and are used for creating trending reports for senior
management reporting such as annual and quarterly
comparisons.
• The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from
the operational systems.
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Operational and Informational Systems

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Data Warehouse Versus Data Mart

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 Types of systems used (1)
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
• It is characterized by a low volume of transactions.
• Queries are often very complex and involve
aggregations.
• OLAP databases store aggregated, historical data in
multi-dimensional schemas (usually star schemas).

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

• Characterized by a large number of transactions
(INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE).
• OLTP databases contain detailed and current data.
• The schema used to store transactional databases is
the entity model (usually 3NF).
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 Types of systems used (2)
Predictive analysis
• It is about finding and quantifying hidden
patterns in the data using complex
mathematical models that can be used to
predict future outcomes.
• Predictive analysis is different from OLAP in
that OLAP focuses on historical data analysis
and is reactive in nature, while predictive
analysis focuses on the future.

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Data Warehouse Architectures
• Generic Two-Level Architecture
• Independent Data Mart
• Dependent Data Mart and Operational Data
Store
• Logical Data Mart and Real-Time Data
Warehouse
• Three-Layer architecture

All involve some form of

extraction, transformation and loading (ETL)
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 Generic two-level data warehousing architecture

L
One,
company-
wide
T warehouse

E 14

Periodic extraction  data is not completely current in warehouse

 Independent Data Mart
Data Warehousing Architecture
Data marts: Mini-warehouses, limited in scope

T
E

Separate ETL for each Data access complexity due

independent data mart to multiple data marts 15
Dependent data mart with operational data store:
a three-level architecture
ODS provides option for
obtaining current data

T
E Simpler data access
Single ETL for Dependent data marts
Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) loaded from EDW 16
Logical data mart and real time warehouse architecture

ODS and data warehouse

are one and the same

T
E
Near real-time ETL for Data marts are NOT separate databases,
Data Warehouse but logical views of the data warehouse
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 Easier to create new data marts
Three-layer data architecture for a data warehouse

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Data Characteristics: Status vs. Event Data

Status

Event = a database action

(create/update/delete) that
results from a transaction

Status
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Data Characteristics: Transient vs. Periodic Data

With transient
data, changes
Transient
to existing
operational
records are
data
written over
previous
records, thus
destroying
the previous
data content

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Data Characteristics: Transient vs. Periodic Data

Periodic data
are never
Periodic physically
warehouse altered or
data deleted once
they have
been added
to the store

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 The Reconciled Data Layer
• Typical operational data is:
– Transient–not historical
– Not normalized (perhaps due to denormalization for
performance)
– Restricted in scope–not comprehensive
– Sometimes poor quality–inconsistencies and errors

• After ETL, data should be:

– Detailed–not summarized yet
– Historical–periodic
– Normalized–3rd normal form or higher
– Comprehensive–enterprise-wide perspective
– Timely–data should be current enough to assist decision-
making
– Quality controlled–accurate with full integrity
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 The ETL Process
• Capture/Extract
• Scrub or data cleansing
• Transform
• Load and Index

ETL = Extract, transform, and load

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 Steps in data reconciliation (1)
Capture/Extract…obtaining a snapshot of a chosen subset of the source data
for loading into the data warehouse

Static extract = capturing a Incremental extract = capturing

snapshot of the source data at a changes that have occurred since
point in time the last static extract 24
 Steps in data reconciliation (2)
Scrub/Cleanse…uses pattern recognition and AI techniques to upgrade data
quality

Fixing errors: misspellings, Also: decoding, reformatting, time

erroneous dates, incorrect field usage, stamping, conversion, key generation,
mismatched addresses, missing data, merging, error detection/logging,
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duplicate data, inconsistencies locating missing data
 Steps in data reconciliation (3)
Transform = convert data from format of operational system to format of data
warehouse

Record-level: Field-level:
Selection–data partitioning single-field–from one field to one field
Joining–data combining multi-field–from many fields to one, or
Aggregation–data summarization one field to many 26
 Steps in data reconciliation (4)
Load/Index= place transformed data into the warehouse and create indexes

Refresh mode: bulk rewriting of Update mode: only changes in source

target data at periodic intervals data are written to data warehouse 27
Single-field transformation
In general–some transformation
function translates data from old
form to new form

Algorithmic transformation uses

a formula or logical expression

Table lookup–another approach,

uses a separate table keyed by
source record code

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Multifield transformation

M:1–from many source fields to one

target field

1:M–from one source field to

many target fields

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 Star Schema
• The star schema separates business
process data into facts.
• Facts hold the measurable, quantitative data
about a business, and dimensions which are
descriptive attributes related to fact data.
• Examples of fact data include sales price,
sale quantity, and time, distance, speed, and
weight measurements.
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 Components of a star schema
Fact tables contain factual or
quantitative data

1:N relationship between dimension Dimension tables are denormalized to

tables and fact tables maximize performance

Dimension tables contain descriptions about

the subjects of the business

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Excellent for ad-hoc queries, but bad for online transaction processing
Star schema example
Fact table provides statistics for
sales broken down by product,
period and store dimensions

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Star schema with sample data

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