Description of the Solution
– Data Warehouse and SQL Server 2005/2008
Budget constraints are a fact of life for Weidenhammer’s SMB clients. However, BI reporting and analyses are an essential capability for enabling our clients to meet strategic and operational objectives. The Weidenhammer Team, in listening to our clients needs, has uncovered a practical set of solutions for our clients that will not break their bank accounts. In short, using the Microsoft BI platform and solution framework inherent in SQL Server 2005/2008, we have found a way to offer our clients affordable reporting and analysis solutions; simply stated “BI on a Budget.”The main component that drives our BI solution is the creation of a Data Warehouse. What is a Data Warehouse? A Data Warehouse is the main repository of an organization's historical data, its corporate memory. It contains the raw material for management's decision making by presenting operational data in a format that makes complex queries and analysis easier to carry out and view.
On regular intervals, data is extracted from operational systems, transformed and loaded into a data warehouse. From the data warehouse, information is delivered to end-users via various reporting and analysis tools.
Why Use a Data Warehouse?
- Data storage systems are designed for storing data; a data warehouse is designed specifically for reporting purposes
- Reporting from multiple operational data stores is difficult
- Different data stores may give different answers to same question
- IT department may be overrun with requests for reports
- Using operational data stores to run reports may overwhelm systems
- Obtaining information from current systems may entail running multiple file extractions and importing data into spreadsheets
- Extractions of extractions
- Sources of data are lost; no audit trail
