Data warehousing

Data warehousing combines data from multiple databases or data sources into a large
database for the purpose of providing more extensive information retrieval and data
analysis. Data from different databases is extracted and transferred to a central data
storage device called a warehouse. The data is normalized, which means redundant
information is stripped out and data are formatted in the way the data warehouse expects
it. This enables users to query one entity rather than accessing and querying different
databases.

 

The data sources the warehouse is built from are used for operational purposes. A
data warehouse is developed to carry out analysis. The analysis can be carried out to
make business forecasting decisions, identify marketing effectiveness, business trends,
and even fraudulent activities.