his integration of the data provides a unified view of the overall organizational situation. Data integration enhances decision-making and helps the manager to better understand the operations of the organization (6:19).Subject-OrientedThe data in DSS database are organized to provide answers to questions coming from different areas within the organization. They are arranged by topic such as sales, marketing, finance and so on. The DSS database contains specific subject for each topic like customer, product, region and so on. This form of data organization is different that of more process-oriented of the operational database system. (5:39,43)Time VariantThe data warehouse contains historical data over a long time. Those data reflect what happened last week, last month, the past five years and the like. (6:19)Non-VolatileOnce the data enter the data warehouse, they are never removed or changed. Because the data warehouse represents the entire history of the organization, the data from operational database are always added to it. Since DSS data are never deleted and new data are periodically added, the data warehouse is always growing. That’s why the data warehouse must be able to have hardware that supports gigabytes and even terabytes size of databases. (5:43) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPERATIONAL DATABASE AND THE DATA WAREHOUSEThe operational database and the DSS database differ in the roles the do as well as the data characteristics for each one.Main Role The transactional database is optimized to support transactions that represent daily operations (2:67). For example, during the registration period at KFUPM, each time a student adds, drops courses, or changes sections, he must be accounted for by the operational database system of the university. So, student data and course data are in frequent update mode.On the other hand, the data warehouse is optimized to support data analysis and decision-making (2:64). Basically, it takes ...
