Data Warehousing Essentials

A data warehouse (DW) is a system used in computing for data analysis and reporting. It is a core component of business intelligence. It stores integrated historical and current data from one or more sources. Data can be characterized according to data integration, time-variance, subject orientation, volatility, granularity, etc. It is then arranged into groups, facts and aggregate facts. The sources of data are cleansed, catalogued, transformed and used for data mining, market research, decision support and online analytical processing. The ways to analyze or retrieve the data, transform, load and extract data and manage the data dictionary are essential components of a data warehousing system. Data warehouses can be designed using the bottom-up, top-down or hybrid design models. This book aims to shed light on some of the unexplored aspects of data warehousing. Most of the topics introduced herein cover new techniques and applications of this field. Those in search of information to further their knowledge will be greatly assisted by this textbook.