Importance of Data Warehousing

Fresh Grocers have completed 10 years and now it’s time that it takes advantage of its huge database that it has built in these years. A central database should be built that will take data from all the departments of all the 40 stores. This central repository will extract all the data from other sources, then transform into the desired form and then finally loading it to the end user. The technique for achieving this is known as Data Warehousing.

Data warehousing is used for data analysis and for reporting purposes. It combines the data from multiple sources into one central repository. The data warehousing has 3 layers which it uses to perform its key functions. The layers are:

Staging: In this layer, data from all the source database systems are collected and deposited into one central repository. In this layer we have all the raw data.

Data Integration: In this layer, the data from the staging layer is integrated and meaningful data sets are formed and stored in the database. This transformed data is stored in a database which is called Operational Data Source (ODS).

Access: In this layer, the data from ODS is moved to another database which is known as Data Warehouse database. In this database, the integrated data formed in integration stage is changed into dimensions facts and aggregate facts. These are nothing but the hierarchical arrangement of data. The combination of facts and dimensions helps users in data retrieval.

Data warehouse can be further divided to data marts which help in focusing the one part of the data. Data marts are subsets of a data warehouse. This data is used for various functions like data mining etc by managing it by various tools.

Advantages of Data Warehouse

Integrated: As data from multiple sources are combined into one database, it helps in answering all the queries from one database.

Time-Variant: It maintains the historical as well as current data which will be useful to analyze trending patterns.

It improves the quality of data.

The information presented in consistent, and free of bad data.

Subject-Oriented: The data is now meaningful and hence helps the business users to take decision from it.

Non-Volatile: The data stored is always permanent. It is never deleted or over-written.

The reports generated by data warehousing is used for various purposes and it helps in taking various decisions. These reports help the manager to see the current trends in the market and of customers. By data warehousing, managers can take decisions according to the selling pattern in different stores. This will also help in better inventory management. It will help in the procurement of items which will be high in demand by looking previous year data which will result in higher profit. By implementing this at Fresh Grocers it will definitely give a competitive advantage to us over our competitors.

References

Patil, Preeti S.; Srikantha Rao; Suryakant B. Patil (2011). "Optimization of Data Warehousing System: Simplification in Reporting and Analysis". International Journal of Computer Applications (Foundation of Computer Science) 9 (6): 33–37

Inmon, W.H., John Wiley (1992).Building the Data Warehouse. John Wiley, 1992.

Bischoff, J., and T. Alexander (eds.). Data Warehouse: Practical Advice from the Experts. Prentice Hall, 1997.

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