Data Warehouse

The data warehouse is a central, organisational, relational repository of integrated data from many disparate sources. Data warehouses store current and historical data and used for reporting and analysis of the data in different ways.

To move data into a data warehouse, it is extracted on a periodic basis from various sources that contain important business information. As the data is moved, it is formatted, cleaned, validated, summarized, and reorganised. Alternately, the data is stored in the lowest level of detail, with aggregated views provided in the warehouse for reporting. In either case, the data warehouse becomes a permanent storage space for data used for reporting, analysis, and help in forming important business decisions using business intelligence tools.