Data Warehouse :-

A data warehouse (DW) is a collection of corporate information and data derived from operational systems and external data sources. A data warehouse is designed to support business decisions by allowing data consolidation, analysis and reporting at different aggregate levels. Data is populated into the DW through the processes of extraction, transformation and loading.

Types of Data Warehouses (DWH): -

There are three main types of data warehouses (DWH) mainly used in enterprise systems -

1. Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW): As a centralized data warehouse, EDW provides a holistic approach to organizing and presenting data.

2. Operational Data Store (ODS): ODS is a data store suited for when neither the OLTP nor a DWH can support a business’s reporting requirements.

3. Data Mart: A data mart is designed for departmental data, such as sales, finance, and supply chain.

Data Warehouse examples :-

A data warehouse has numerous real-world applications in the corporate world. Lets look at a few examples of how they are used across various industries to understand data warehouse definition better.

• In retail: For the retail industry, a good example would be a retail data mart that incorporates customer information from cash registers, mailing lists, websites, and feedback cards. Similarly, another relevant example of the application is the healthcare sector that uses it to access the patient’s reports, share important data with insurance providers, predict outcomes, etc.

• In healthcare: In healthcare, these central repositories are used to record patient information from different units of the medical unit. This would include patient personal information, financial transactions with the hospital, and insurance data. All this is consolidated in the data warehouse and connected through the database schema.

• In construction: Similarly, in construction, the construction firms require data of every purchase made during the construction timeline. This purchase needs to be attributed to a source to make financial decisions. The same goes for the wages of contractual employees. All this data will be recorded in a data store and later used for business visualizations to estimate the overall spending of the company on a single construction site.

• In finance: Banks, insurance firms, trading firms, and others related to the finance sector need accurate data at all times. This is only possible when the data in the databases is validated properly and appropriately connected with other tables in the database.

These are just some examples of how data warehouses are used widely in different industries and for varying purposes. Since they are just an organized store of data, they can serve many purposes for the end-user.