The Return on Investment of Data Warehousing

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The Return on Investment of Data Warehousing

This paper will present the return on investment (ROI) of data warehousing (DW). The history of data warehousing is based on the definition and timeline. Then, detailed information about return on investment will be discussed. Following, will be information about data warehousing new technology of hardware and software. Data Warehousing is a new term in my department where we use the Network Appliance (NetApps) Netfiler storage devices/units. The information read was very informative and helpful in my understanding data warehousing better. Finally, a conclusion about the return on investment of data warehousing.

According to Ralph Kimball's article, www.dwinfocenter.org/defined.html, "a data warehouse is a copy of transaction data specifically structured for querying and analysis." The author has two quibbles with the Ralph's definition and they are: "1) sometimes non-transaction data are stored in a data warehouse – though probably 95-99% of the data usually are transaction data and 2) querying and reporting rather than "query and analysis" because the main output from data warehouse systems are either tabular listings (queries) with minimal formatting or highly formatted "formal" reports." "Queries and reports generated from data stored in a data warehouse may or may not be used for analysis." The author states, "he especially like about Ralph's definition is what he does not say which is the form of the stored data has nothing to do with whether something is a data warehouse." A data warehouse can be normalized and de-normalized. It can be a relational database, multidimensional database, flat file, hierarchical database and object database. Data warehouse...

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...r or collaboration and shared solutions." These two CIOs are speaking from experience, not usage of management reports or historical data, which provides management with decision making solutions. Federal agencies need to share data and there is a data-sharing model (GJXDM) to simplify the exchange of law enforcement files. This is very crucial because we read or see on the news, all the time how a person is in one state as a regular citizen working who is actually a felon in another state. Another big area of concern is public-safety agencies as well as courts. I work with three Acquisition systems that have the same data field types and names, but do not share information so you have to type the same date in each system which equals to three times of data redundancy. I am glad I chose this topic for my paper because it is always good to learn new information.

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