CHAPTER 8 : ACCESSING ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION - DATA WAREHOUSE

Data Warehouse Fundamentals 

Data warehouse

 A logical collection of information-gathered from many different operational database-that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks.

Primary purpose

To aggregate information throughout an organization into a single repository in such a way that employees can make decisions and undertake business analysis activities.

Extraction, transformation and loading (ETL)

A process that extracts information from internal and external database, transforms the information using a common set of enterprise definitions, and loads the information into a data warehouse.

Data warehouse

Then send subsets of the information to data mart.

Data mart 

Contain the subsets of data warehouse information

Data Warehouse Model

Multidimensional Analysis and Data Mining

Cube

Common term for the representation of multidimensional information.

Data Mining

Process of analyzing data to extract information not to offered by the raw data alone.

 - Known as 'knowledge discovery' 

To perform data mining user needs data mining tools

Data Mining Tools uses a variety of techniques to find patterns and relationships in large volumes in information. Ex : retailers can use knowledge of these patterns to improve the placement of items in the layout of a mail-order catalog page or Web pages.

Information Cleansing or Scrubbing

- A process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect or incomplete information.

- Occur during ETL process and second on the information once if is in the data warehouse.

 Contract information in an operational system

 Standardizing Customer Name from Operational Systems

 Accurate and Complete Information

Business Intelligence

Refers to application and technologies that are use to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information to support decision-making efforts. Ex : Excel, Access.