Table of Contents
Data warehouse definition
Let’s start with a simple question about data warehouse definition. What is data warehouse? Well, there are several popular data warehousing definitions from well-known data warehousing authors such as Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. Each data warehouse definition has its own approach however they share the same desirable features that has enterprise focus so that it data warehouse provides strategic information to help business make decision faster and more effectively based on facts.
Data warehouse architectures
This section discusses about various data warehouse architectures including Bill Inmon’s enterprise data warehouse and Ralph Kimball’s dimensional data warehouse. We also examine federated data warehouse architecture that has been the most practical approach for building data warehouse system. In addition, you will know how to differentiate between data warehouse and data mart.
Data warehouse concepts
In this section, you will find all fundamental data warehousing concepts including star schema, snowflake schema, dimension table, fact table, logical data model, physical data model, slowly changing dimension, etc.
Data warehouse design
This section covers one of the most important topic in data warehousing: data warehouse design. You will learn various data warehouse design methodologies including bottom-up, top-down and hybrid design.
ETL – extract, transform and load
ETL plays a crucial role in data warehousing environment. In this section, you will find all information on ETL architecture, ETL process, ETL tools and etc.
Business intelligence
Business intelligence is decision support system (DSS) that aims to support better business decision making. Business intelligence often uses data provided by data warehouse. The concept of business intelligence is usually missed with data warehouse therefore in this section, we explain the definition of business intelligence and how it differs from data warehouse. You will also find a lot of useful topics about business intelligence including business intelligence architecture, business intelligence solutions and business intelligence applications.