Operational Systems

Denise36 · Joined: 16 Jan 2008 Posts: 1

Data Warehouses can be architected in many different ways, depending on the specific needs of a business. The model shown below is the "hub-and-spokes" Data Warehousing architecture that is popular in many organizations. In short, data is moved from databases used in operational systems into a data warehouse staging area, then into a data warehouse and finally into a set of conformed data marts. Data is copied from one database to another using a technology called ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load).

The principal reason why businesses need to create Data Warehouses is that their corporate data assets are fragmented across multiple, disparate applications systems, running on different technical platforms in different physical locations. This situation does not enable good decision making.

When data redundancy exists in multiple databases, data quality often deteriorates. Poor business intelligence results in poor strategic and tactical decision making. Individual business units within an enterprise are designated as "owners" of operational applications and databases. These "organizational silos" sometimes don't understand the strategic importance of having well integrated, non-redundant corporate data. Consequently, they frequently purchase or build operational systems that do not integrate well with existing systems in the business.

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