Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A Number Of Functions And Advantages Of Data Warehousing

By Aaron Goldsmith


Data warehousing is the process of collecting all the data of the organization in a data warehouse. The data warehouse is a repository of the organization's data stored electronically. This warehouse makes it easy to analyze and report on data. Warehousing of data has multiple benefits and multiple uses.

The first benefit of this warehousing is the simplification of the process of reporting and analysis of data. This is due to the fact that in this warehouse all the records and information are stored in a common model and not in multiple models. In a typical business scenario using this warehouse, all the companies' records of general ledger charges, overheads, sales and purchase among other records are kept in a central common data model. For the person desiring to make a report or to analyze particular data, the person will simply be required to retrieve the needed information from the central common model rather than from multiple different data models.

The warehousing of organizational records and information will occur without interruption to the functioning of the operating system. This is attributed to the fact that these warehouses are separated from the operating systems. Data Retrieval from this warehouse will also not cause any undue interruption to the operating systems. Warehouses of business data despite their separation form operating systems do enhance business operational applications.

The production of reports is one activity of operational systems supported by these warehouses. In production of reports, budget figures and figures of actual performance stored in the warehouse are normally retrieved for the purposes of preparing comprehensive reports. Exceptional reports and trend reports are some of the reports prepared by most business concerns. The functioning of CRM (Customer Relationship management) systems in business organizations is normally supported by these warehouses.

Another advantage of the warehousing process is that data is kept in a stable form for long periods of time. This is due to the fact that, information inside a data warehouse cannot be modified as it is read only information. To modify any report from this warehouse, the report should be downloaded and transferred to a program like Microsoft Excel. Once the information is in Microsoft Excel, it can easily be manipulated. However, the information in the warehouse cannot be manipulated in any manner. To create a custom report, one will first be required to bring the data to the computer screen from the warehouse by use of a query tool. After bringing the data to the screen, it can subsequently be exported to the Excel program.

The process of preparation of custom and non custom reports will be greatly enhanced by this warehouse. When preparing custom reports, one may need advice and help from staff with expert knowledge of the warehousing activity. This staff is to be found in different organizations which deal with large volumes of data.

When creating a report requiring a large number of columns and rows, the data storage warehouse will come in handy. This warehouse has a quick response time even when someone requests for a report with numerous number of rows. A warehouse storing data will take only a few minutes to respond to any query.

Data warehousing has multiple usefulness and multiple benefits. One of the benefits of this warehousing is that it makes the process of reporting and analyzing easy. One of the uses of a data warehouse is to create custom reports.




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