The Data Warehouse Environment

Data warehouses comprise a multifaceted environment that spans the information systems spectrum from operational transaction systems to systems designed for executive and front-line decision makers. There are four main elements of a data warehouse environment:

  1. Source systems

  2. Extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) systems

  3. Data warehouse repository

  4. Reporting tools and portals

Each of these is described below.

Source Systems

As the name implies, source systems provide the raw material for the data warehouse and business intelligence systems. The design and implementation of these applications is outside the scope of the data warehouse, and source systems are typically treated as black boxes. Some of the considerations ...

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