All You Need To Know About Data Warehouse Software

By TechDogs Editorial Team

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Overview

Do you have a data problem? If you're overwhelmed with the amount of data your business is amassing and are unable to arrive at actionable decisions from it efficiently and quickly, then the answer is yes. Data Warehouse Software might be the solution you need to help manage your data problem.

A data warehouse is separate from an operational database, preserving historical data that isn't erased when new data is collected. Data warehouses are designed to centralize your data, storing it in such a way that it's easy to search and retrieve. Business stakeholders can then mine vast amounts of data, turning it into actionable intelligence which can be used to plan the next big business venture.

In the movie, Stranger Than Fiction, an IRS auditor named Harold Crick (played by Will Ferrell) is assigned to audit the owner of a bakery shop, Ana Pascal who hasn't filed her taxes in years. When Crick arrives at her shop for the audit, Pascal presents him with all her paperwork stuffed into a single, overflowing box. Crick spends most of the movie sorting through the paperwork (this, by the way, is only the subplot). It is the perfect example, however, of how not to manage your files.

TechDogs-All You Need To Know About Data Warehouse Software-Scene From "Stranger Than Fiction" Movie, Harold Crick Was Similar To A Data Warehouse Software

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We mean, what if you kept all of your business information-books, papers, files, tapes, receipts, tax returns and more-in a heap on the floor or stuffed into one overflowing box? In the short term, it might feel good to toss everything into a pile to deal with later but it would be an absolute nightmare to find anything. As you accumulate more information, the pile would grow and become even more unruly.

Without an organized way to store and retrieve your information, your business would be a mess and you'd be a basket case. It's the same with digital files. Letting your digital big data accumulate without addressing the need to properly store, easily retrieve and analyze them is equivalent to tossing them into a heap on the (digital) floor. The good news is there's a handy solution (and we don't mean Harold Crick) to address this exact problem. It's called Data Warehouse Software.

A data warehouse serves the same purpose as a good tax auditor. It helps you organize your business data by creating a central repository for, well, every digital document, file and asset you create. Data warehouse tool are valuable to businesses because they allow them to easily retrieve and analyze historical data. Imagine how much happier Crick would've been if he could've simply retrieved all of Pascal's files by looking stuff up alphabetically or doing a keyword search? (of course, then we wouldn't have much of a movie but we digress). Don't be like Ana Pascal. Organize your digital stuff with Data Warehouse Software!

What Is Data Warehouse Software?

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Data Warehouse Software processes, transforms and ingests data for the purpose of producing business insights (Harold Crick would approve). This data management is done by leveraging business analytics and raw data visualization capabilities. If your Data Warehouse is your company's overflowing box of documents, then Data Warehousing Software is what makes the information accessible, retrievable and analyzable.

The data in a data warehouse is collected from many different places or data source. It typically includes marketing, sales, finance, customer and prospect data. In technical terms, a Data Warehouse is defined as a "subject oriented, time-variant and non-volatile collection of data." That means it does not undergo frequent changes (Kind of like Harold Crick...until he met Ana - spoiler alert!).

History Of Data Warehouse Software

Pull up a chair and grab some hot cocoa. This will take a while.

The history of data storage stretches back to the mid-1950s when punch cards arose as a solution for storing digital data.

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Here’s a fun timeline of how we started with punch cards (which are actual pieces of paper) and ended up with massive data warehouses.

1950s

Punch cards stored digital data using the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. They were inserted into “card readers” and used as the primary means to input and store data.
1960s

By the 1960s, magnetic storage started replacing punch cards. Later, disk storage on hard drives and “floppy disks” replaced magnetic tapes, an innovation made by IBM.
1970s

The next innovation in data storage and the precursor to modern data warehouses, were Database Management Systems (DBMS). The first DBMS was invented by IBM in 1966 and included data management capabilities that could identify the data’s location, resolve data conflicts, delete data, find more room to store data, etc. Commercial data applications led to the emergence of industry-specific DBMS for tasks like claims, bank teller processing and airline reservation processing.
1980s

Relational databases (databases that organize data into tables linked based on common data points) that used Structured Query Language (SQL) became popular in the 80s.
1990s

The rise of the Internet, advances in computer technology and an associated influx of data necessitated the need for data warehouses to solve the problem of integrating and storing data from multiple sources so actionable business insights could be extracted.
2000s

Data warehouses as we know them today came into play around 2008, thanks to Facebook, which began using a non-relational database (NoSQL) management system to process large amounts of data. Software associated with data warehouses was developed to address various aspects of data management, as we’ll get into now.

How Does Data Warehouse Software Work?

Data Warehouse Software is kind of like having your own personal Harold Crick (on steroids). It pulls data from different overflowing boxes (e.g., sources and applications), formats and processes that data and matches it with what's already in the Data Warehouse. This makes the data accessible to anyone in an organization who wants to retrieve it for the purpose of analysis. Thanks, Harold!

Any business that deals with large volumes of data and wants to make fast decisions with confidence can benefit from a Data Warehouse Software.

Some key features of a data warehouse are:

It is subject-oriented (provides information about a subject) and is separate from an organization's operational database.
The data integration into one location from different sources.
The data is time-variant so that it can be analyzed from a historical perspective (e.g., the data collected is identified with a time period)
It is non-volatile, meaning old data is not erased when new data is collected.
It is query-driven, e.g., queries are used to retrieve data (this includes planned and ad hoc queries)
It contains load managing architecture that extracts data from the source system, loads that data into a temporary "store" and transforms it into the data warehouse's format

Types Of Data Warehouse Software

Unlike our simple hero, Harold Crick, digital data is complex. It requires several flavors of software before it can be made accessible and stored in a Data Warehouse. These include:

Data cleansing tools

also called data "scrubbing" tools. They analyze, standardize and consolidate data. These tools clean the data by removing duplicates, fixing structural errors, filtering out unwanted data and addressing other issues like missing data.
Data conversion tools

transform data from the source format into the Data Warehouse format using standardization techniques that integrate different data sources into one single source. Microfiche machines in libraries are an excellent analogy. Microfilm reduces the size of printed materials and makes them easier to store and preserve. The original source (e.g., the newspaper or magazine) is scanned onto 35 mm film, which can be read via a digital lens.
Data access and query tools

(also called "data dippers") generate reports and queries while performing simple analysis via an accessible user interface.
Online analytical processing (OLAP) tool

process large volumes of data for multi-dimensional data analysis. OLAP tools display the results as charts, graphs, tables and other formats, which businesses can use when planning various initiatives and strategies.
Reporting tools

present the data in a visually compelling way and create a permanent record of an organization at a specific point in time. They also enable stakeholders to view, share and collaborate on the organization's data.

Why Do We Need Data Warehouse Software?

A data warehouse improves not only the quality of data but also the consistency. It helps in delivering advanced business intelligence furthermore it streamlines the overall flow of business information. They are the virtual solution to organizing your overflowing boxes of stuff into neat, labeled bins for easy access. Data warehouses also make you more agile and competitive. How responsive can you be to market needs and competitive threats if you can't easily access your own data? (Answer: not very). Data warehouse solution gives you a holistic view of where you stand in the market compared to your competitors. It also preserves historical information, enabling businesses to plan future strategies based on past successes and failures.

Importance Of Data Warehouse Software

Here's the bottom line: data is the foundation of business intelligence and housing it appropriately is the key to understanding everything about your customers, prospects, sales and operations. It makes all those sources easier to manage, offering the following benefits.

Data consolidation
Improving data quality, accuracy and consistency
Save time in accessing and interpreting historical data
Informed decision making through structured data
Improving the performance of operational databases by keeping data analytics processing in a separate warehouse

The Future Of Data Warehouse Software

Large enterprises generate more data than ever before, amounting to thousands upon thousands of overflowing boxes of documents. There's no way Harold Crick-or even a hundred Harold Cricks-could organize and analyze that much data. More than 90% of all data was created in the past 2 years alone! Unstructured data presents a problem for 95% of businesses, which is why Data Warehouse Software will be critical for business planning and analysis.

The future of data warehousing solution is in the cloud and combining all enterprise data into one source (e.g., a "single source of truth"). The data warehouse of the future looks like one large virtual file box, serverless and capable of meeting an organization's every data need.

However, the reality of today's data warehouse solution (versus tomorrow's) is that most companies still have multiple warehouses. The quick fix for combining multiple data warehouses is data virtualization-a process that combines structured data from different sources, connecting it in the cloud to create cloud data warehouse, the one data source that's easy for businesses to access, analyze and leverage. Harold Crick would indeed breathe a sigh of relief if he had that kind of organization at his fingertips.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Data Warehouse Software?

Data Warehouse Software is a tool designed to process, transform, and ingest data to produce valuable business insights. It acts as a central repository for digital documents, files, and assets, making information easily accessible, retrievable, and analyzable. Similar to how a tax auditor organizes financial documents, Data Warehouse Software organizes digital data, enabling businesses to retrieve and analyze historical data effectively.

How does Data Warehouse Software work?

Data Warehouse Software functions by extracting data from various sources and applications, formatting and processing it, and integrating it with existing data in the warehouse. This process makes data accessible to anyone within an organization for analysis. Businesses dealing with large volumes of data can benefit from this software, as it offers features such as subject-oriented data organization, time-variant data analysis, and non-volatile data storage.

Why do we need Data Warehouse Software?

Data Warehouse Software plays a crucial role in improving the quality, consistency, and accessibility of data. By streamlining the flow of business information and providing advanced business intelligence, it enhances decision-making processes and makes businesses more agile and competitive. With the increasing volume of data generated by enterprises, Data Warehouse Software becomes essential for organizing and analyzing data effectively, enabling businesses to stay ahead in a competitive market landscape.

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