Data warehouse

What is a data warehouse?

A data warehouse (DWH) is a system designed for the centralized storage, organization and processing of data from various sources. It is used primarily for analytics, reporting and decision support.

Unlike ordinary operational databases, a data warehouse is designed to enable effective analysis of large amounts of data and comparison over time.

How does a data warehouse work?

A data warehouse obtains data from various business systems, such as ERP, CRM, accounting or other applications.

The data is then processed, cleaned, unified and stored in a structure suitable for analysis. Users can create reports on top of this data, analyze results and track the development of business indicators.

What are the benefits of a data warehouse?

A data warehouse makes it possible to:

• connect data from different information systems
• unify the structure and definitions of data
• keep historical data
• improve the availability of information
• speed up analytical queries
• create a single basis for reporting
• reduce the dependence of reports on individual operational systems

What is the difference between a database and a data warehouse?

Operational databases usually support the day-to-day running of applications and the recording of transactions. A data warehouse focuses on analytical processing, historical overviews and reporting. A data warehouse can therefore use data from several operational databases at the same time.