DATA

WAREHOUSE
A summary for the following
articles
1- Data Warehouse
as a Backbone for Business
Intelligence: Issues and Challenges (Dr. Mutaz
M. Al-Debei)
2- Integrated decision support systems: A data
warehousing perspective (Salvatore T. March,
Alan R. Hevner)
3- FEATURES TO CONSIDER IN A
DATAWAREHOUSING SYSTEM
(Narasimhaiah Gorla)

Prepared
By
- Sinan
-AlQawasmeh
Alaa
Hamdan
Data Warehouse can be defined as a subject-oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant, non-updatable
collection of data to support management decision-making processes and business intelligence.

Subject-oriented: Data are grouped by subjects.

Integrated: Data are stored in a globally consistent format. This implies cleansing the data so that data
have consistent naming conventions and physical attribute
o Time-Variant: Data captured are for long-term use often 510 years
o Non-volatile: Once data at a particular time are captured and stored, their attributes are preserved.
This leads us to define the Business Intelligence which involves knowledge discovery and inferences by analyzing
the data stored in DW to acquire valuable information.
Generally speaking, the key role of the data warehouse is to provide compelling business intelligence to the
decision-maker facilitating an understanding of business problems, opportunities, and performance. It must
incorporate internal and external knowledge acquired over time and adapt it to current business conditions.
Benefits of implementing Data warehouses:
1- Time Saving for the data suppliers and the users of the data since all the needed data can be extracted from
one accurate source
2- More and better information since DW solved the problems associated to their independently legacy
systems which often contains inaccurate, duplicate and dissimilar data about the same entity.
3- Better decisions can be made by providing the decision makers with suitable information which is
fundamentally different from the type of information used in day-to-day information
4- Support for the accomplishment of strategic business objectives through analyzing historical, current and
future data.
5- Facilitate business process re-engineering at business organizations.
Several empirical evidences are listed and all proves that implementing DW to support DSS systems results in
significantly better performance by providing more reliable and consistent data for business decision-making.
o
o

Types of data needed for decision makers

Foundational information includes traditional accounting and financial measurements

such as cashflow and liquidity projections and ratios.
Productivity information describes the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational
production processes including knowledge-based and servicebased processes and the
opportunity costs associated with management decisions.
Competence information describes the core competencies that enable a business to
succeed. These are unique abilities that differentiate a business from its competitors and
form the basis from which competitive advantage can be gained.
Resource-allocation information deals with the effective and efficient use of scarce
organizational resources.
Environmental information: information about markets, customers, and non-customers;
about technology in ones own industry and others; about world-wide finance; and about the
changing world economy.

Data warehousing architecture

1- Content management: to provide the types of data described above for decision
makers, we need to Extract, Transform and load information generated from daily
operations from diverse operational ISs and external sources.

2- Integration and Design: determination,

representation,
and
conceptual
integration of the data those are relevant
to the managerial decision-making in an
organization.
3- Use: the modes of dissemination of
information to the end user; the
development,
selection,
and
implementation of appropriate models,
analytic tools, and data mining tools; the
privacy and security of data; system
performance; and adequate levels of
training and support.
4- Evolution: data warehouse must be
designed for change from the beginning

Issues and Challenges of DWs developments/Implementation:

Additional Features to consider in a data warehousing system

The discussion here is about the technical specification of the analytical tool (online analytical processing tools
(OLAP)) that should be used with the data warehouse to satisfy the End user and so to get the maximum utilization
from this investment. The acceptance of Data warehouse and OLAP by End users can be measured by:
1- Perceived ease of use (PEU): the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would
be free of effort.
2- Perceived usefulness (PU): the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would
enhance his job performance.
Two types of OLAP were introduced and examined here (MOLAP and ROLAP) and the result of the research was
that MOLAP tools make the data warehouse system easy to use but not useful; ROLAP tools make the data
warehouse useful but not easy to use.
The main idea here is that organizations should believe that how users perceive
data warehouses is a major factor for the success of this tool, huge investments
are paid to implement data warehouse and its analytical tools but it will be failed
if end user perception was not taken into consideration in terms of PEU and PU.