sion support database that is maintained separately from an organization's operational databases and it usually resides on a dedicated server. This database is designed based on what kind of information a company is seeking (e.g., sales marketing, healthcare membership and providers, etc.) and it adopts a STAR (or SNOWFLAKE) schema design for maximum efficiency in performance. Extracting appropriate data from existing operational database(s), cleansing or scrubbing the data, denormalizing the data, and then loading the data into the database populate the database. (This data population process is also known as the data transformation process.) This database is then the "place" for top executives, managers, analysts, and other end-users to mine a rich source of company information. They can ask compelling business questions and find answers in their data so they can make key and timely business decisions from their desktops using GUI On-line Analysis Processing (OLAP) tools. Attributes Of A Data Warehouse According to W.H. Inmon, who is considered the father of data warehousing, "A Data Warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time variant, nonvolatile collection of data in support of management's decision-making process." These fundamental attributes of a data warehouse are further explained below: Subject Oriented Operational data, such as order processing and manufacturing databases, are organized around business activities or functional areas. They are typically optimized to serve a single, static, application. The functional separation of applications causes companies to store identical information in multiple locations. The duplicated information's format and currency are usually inconsistent. For example, in a delivery database, the customer list will have very detailed information on customer addresses and is typically indexed by customer number concatenated with a zip code. The same customer list in the invoicing system will...
