Re: On the subject of Data Warehouses, Data Cubes & OLAP....

Most OLTP systems do support the information requested. It's just very difficult to retrieve. Additionally when the business requires enterprise level reporting across the various functional applications, a warehouse becomes a necessity.  You know the scene, large company with 10 different order entry systems for each functional area of the company (i.e. cost center). One for small biz, one for consumer, one for z product, one for y product, etc. And of course there was never any upfront effort by a data management organization to ensure consistent representation of enterprise level entities. So you end up with a hodge podge set of data that must be abstracted to make consistent within a DW environment. And since you're already there go ahead and put it in a dimensional format so somebody can understand it and easily pull data/reports. Welcome to the fortune 500.

Stephan Eggermont <stephan_at_stack.nl> wrote:
>In comp.databases.olap John Keeley <duvinrouge_at_servihoo.com> wrote:
>> Stuart,
>>
>> The great irony in all this is there is little rationality in the
>> decision to buy decison support systems, when rationality is what a
>> decision support system is all about.
>
>Well, most decision support systems are bought because someone feels
>he doesn't have enough control over what is going on in the
>business. An interesting question to ask that someone is why the
>current systems don't provide the needed information, and how the
>decision to build/buy them was taken. I haven't seen much rationality
>there.
>
>Stephan
  Received on Wed Oct 22 2003 - 18:00:32 CEST