A data warehouse is a term used to describe the electronically stored data of an organization. These warehouses are important in helping an organization analyze and report on the organization data. It is a process that aims at storing data but it also aims at retrieving, extracting, transforming, analyzing and managing all the data of a company or organization. Thus, in general, a data warehouse can be described as a business extraction tool that extracts loads and analyzes data. These data warehouses are very vital in the management of a company's transactions.
The concept of a data warehouse consists of several layers; the operational database layer which comprises the main source of data or information for the data warehouse, the informational access layer which comprises all the data that has been accessed to prepare for analyzing and reporting, data access layer which acts as the link between informational and access layers and the metadata layer which acts as the directory for the data (Westerman, 2001).
[...] For example a data warehouse usually contains two or more servers. It also requires tasks like backups, software updates, bug fixes, hardware maintenance, security procedures and other requirements that must be attended to regularly. Therefore the manager must ensure that the properly qualified staffs for such tasks are present. The manager should also ensure that there is an on- site support team to help the users in taking care of problems that arise. Such team could either be from an outside agency or from the organization (Humphries, Hawkins & Dy, 1999). [...]
[...] the business plan are then organized and put into the concept data model. This model acts as a blue print on which a physical database design can be developed. Just like in the development of other design projects the manager needs to decide on what steps of system analysis, development, implementation, design and support to use while developing a data warehouse. The manager should also determine what data should be put in the data warehouse and also where to find such data or the source of the data. [...]
[...] For example, the data quality control system is a special software that a manager can deploy to for statistical control and also to help in finding possible errors and corruptions in the data and help in correcting these corruptions. A data warehouse is also prone to loss of data and discrepancies. Therefore a manager requires special applications that will measure for any discrepancy and give a feedback to the manager. It is also necessary that a manager ensures that data is assessed for discrepancies frequently to allow for an increase in the accuracy, timeliness and completeness of the resulting reports. [...]
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