Real Time Stuff

Prospects, This is the Only place Where YOu can Find All Interview questions,Faqs and Real Stuff and scenario & Scripts with Resumes, Stick to It for Updates,,,,

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Data Warehouse Concepts


Data Warehouse Concepts


What is a Data Warehouse?


According to Inmon, famous author for several data warehouse books, "A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, time variant, non volatile collection of data in support of management's decision making process".


Example:
In order to store data, over the years, many application designers in each branch have made their individual decisions as to how an application and database should be built. So source systems will be different in naming conventions, variable measurements, encoding structures, and physical attributes of data. Consider a bank that has got several branches in several countries, has millions of customers and the lines of business of the enterprise are savings, and loans. The following example explains how the data is integrated from source systems to target systems.


Example of Source Data


System Name Attribute Name Column Name Datatype Values
Source System 1 Customer Application Date CUSTOMER_APPLICATION_DATE NUMERIC(8,0) 11012005
Source System 2 Customer Application Date CUST_APPLICATION_DATE DATE 11012005
Source System 3 Application Date APPLICATION_DATE DATE 01NOV2005

In the aforementioned example, attribute name, column name, datatype and values are entirely different from one source system to another. This inconsistency in data can be avoided by integrating the data into a data warehouse with good standards.



Example of Target Data(Data Warehouse)


Target System Attribute Name Column Name Datatype Values
Record #1 Customer Application Date CUSTOMER_APPLICATION_DATE DATE 01112005
Record #2 Customer Application Date CUSTOMER_APPLICATION_DATE DATE 01112005
Record #3 Customer Application Date CUSTOMER_APPLICATION_DATE DATE 01112005



In the above example of target data, attribute names, column names, and datatypes are consistent throughout the target system. This is how data from various source systems is integrated and accurately stored into the data warehouse.


Data Warehouse Architecture Diagram