Q.

1: "A data warehouse in an environment, not a product"

Comment.
Ans.: A data warehouse is not a single software or hardware product you purchase to
provide strategic information. It is, rather, a computing environment where users can find
strategic information, an environment where users are put directly in touch with the data
they need to make better decisions. It is a user-centric environment.
Following are the characteristics of this new computing environment called the data
warehouse:
An ideal environment for data analysis and decision support
Fluid, flexible, and interactive
100 percent user-driven
Very responsive and conducive to the ask-answer-ask-again pattern
Provides the ability to discover answers to complex, unpredictable questions
Data warehousing is the process of constructing and using a data warehouse. A data
warehouse is constructed by integrating data from multiple heterogeneous sources that
support analytical reporting, structured and/or ad hoc queries, and decision making. Data
warehousing involves data cleaning, data integration, and data consolidations.
A data warehouses provides us generalized and consolidated data in
multidimensional view. Along with generalized and consolidated view of data, a data
warehouses also provides us Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools. These tools help us
in interactive and effective analysis of data in a multidimensional space. This analysis results
in data generalization and data mining.
Data mining functions such as association, clustering, classification, prediction can be
integrated with OLAP operations to enhance the interactive mining of knowledge at multiple
level of abstraction. That's why data warehouse has now become an important platform for
data analysis and online analytical processing.
Key features of a data warehouse are discussed below:
Subject Oriented - A data warehouse is subject oriented because it provides
information around a subject rather than the organization's ongoing operations. These
subjects can be product, customers, suppliers, sales, revenue, etc. A data warehouse
does not focus on the ongoing operations, rather it focuses on modelling and analysis
of data for decision making.
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Integrated

- A data warehouse is constructed by integrating data from heterogeneous

sources such as relational databases, flat files, etc. This integration enhances the
effective analysis of data.
Time Variant - The data collected in a data warehouse is identified with a particular
time period. The data in a data warehouse provides information from the historical
point of view.
Non-volatile - Non-volatile means the previous data is not erased when new data is
added to it. A data warehouse is kept separate from the operational database and
therefore frequent changes in operational database are not reflected in the data
warehouse.
A data warehouse does not require transaction processing, recovery, and concurrency
controls.
Q.2: You are a Senior Analyst in the IT department of a company
manufacturing
automobile parts. The marketing VP is complaining about the
poor response by IT in

providing strategic information. Draft a proposal to him

explaining the reasons for the
problems and why a data warehouse would be the only viable
solution.
Ans.: We need different types of decision-support systems to provide strategic information.
The type of information needed for strategic decision making is different from that available
from operational systems. We need a new type of system environment for the purpose of
providing strategic information for analysis, discerning trends, and monitoring performance.
1. A New Type of System Environment
The desired features of the new type of system environment are:
Database designed for analytical tasks
Data from multiple applications
Easy to use and conducive to long interactive sessions by users
Read-intensive data usage
Direct interaction with the system by the users without IT assistance
Content updated periodically and stable
Content to include current and historical data
Ability for users to run queries and get results online
Ability for users to initiate reports
2. Processing Requirements in the New Environment
Most of the processing in the new environment for strategic information will have to be
analytical. There are four levels of analytical processing requirements:
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a) Running of simple queries and reports against current and historical data
b) Ability to perform "what if " analysis is many different ways
c) Ability to query, step back, analyze, and then continue the process to any
desired length
d) Spot historical trends and apply them for future results
3. Business Intelligence at the Data Warehouse
This new system environment that users desperately need to obtain strategic
information happens to be the new paradigm of data warehousing. Enterprises that are
building data warehouses are actually building this new system environment. This new
environment is kept separate from the system environment supporting the day-to-day
operations. The data warehouse essentially holds the business intelligence for the enterprise
to enable strategic decision making. The data warehouse is the only viable solution. We
have clearly seen that solutions based on the data extracted from operational systems are all
totally unsatisfactory. Figure 2.1 shows the nature of business intelligence at the data
warehouse.
At a high level of interpretation, the data warehouse contains critical measurements of
the business processes stored along business dimensions. For example, a data warehouse
might contain units of sales, by product, day, customer group, sales district, sales region,
and promotion. Here the business dimensions are product, day, customer group, sales
district, sales region, and promotion.
From where does the data warehouse get its data? The data is derived from the
operational systems that support the basic business processes of the organization. In
between the operational systems and the data warehouse, there is a data staging area. In this
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staging area, the operational data is cleansed and transformed into a form suitable for
placement in the data warehouse for easy retrieval.

Q.3: Your Company is in the business of renting DVDs and video

tapes. The
company has recently entered into e-business and the senior
management wants to
make the existing data warehouse Web-enabled. List and
describe any three of the
major tasks required for satisfying the managements directive.
Ans.: The single most remarkable phenomenon that has impacted computing and
communication during the last few years is the Internet. At every major industry conference
and in every trade journal, most of the discussions relate to the Internet and the Worldwide
Web in one way or another.
Starting with a meager number of just four host computer systems in 1969, the Internet
has swelled to gigantic proportions with nearly 95 million hosts by 2000. It is still growing
exponentially. The number of Worldwide Web sites has escalated to nearly 26 million by
2000. Nearly 150 million global users get on the Internet. Making full use of the everpopular
Web technology, numerous companies have built Intranets and Extranets to reach
their employees, customers, and business partners. The Web has become the universal
information delivery system.
It is also known that how the Internet has fueled the tremendous growth of electronic
commerce in recent years. Annual volume of business-to-business e-commerce exceeds
$300 billion and total e-commerce will soon pass the $1 trillion mark. No business can
compete or survive without a Web presence. The number of companies conducting business
over the Internet is expected to grow to 400,000 by 2003.
As a data warehouse professional, what are the implications for you? Clearly, one has
to tap into the enormous potential of the Internet and Web technology for enhancing the
value of your data warehouse. Also, one needs to recognize the significance of e-commerce
and enhance your warehouse to support and expand your company's e-business.
One has to transform your data warehouse into a Web-enabled data warehouse. On the
one hand, one has to bring your data warehouse to the Web, and, on the other hand, one
needs to bring the Web to your data warehouse
1. The Warehouse to the Web
In early implementations, the corporate data warehouse was intended for managers,
executives, business analysts, and a few other high-level employees as a tool for analysis
and decision making. Information from the data warehouse was delivered to this group of
users in a client/server environment. But today's data warehouses are no longer confined to
a select group of internal users. Under present conditions, corporations need to increase the
productivity of all the members in the corporation's value chain. Useful information from
the corporate data warehouse must be provided not only to the employees but also to
customers, suppliers, and all other business partners.
So in today's business climate, you need to open your data warehouse to the entire
community of users in the value chain, and perhaps also to the general public. This is a tall
order. How can you accomplish this requirement to serve information to thousands of users
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in 24 x 7 mode? How can you do this without incurring exorbitant costs for information
delivery? The Internet along with Web technology is the answer. The Web will be your
primary information delivery mechanism.
This new delivery method will radically change the ways your users will retrieve,
analyze, and share information from your data warehouse. The components of your
information delivery will be different. The Internet interface will include browser, search
engine, push technology, home page, information content, hypertext links, and downloaded

Java or ActiveX applets.

When you bring your data warehouse to the Web, from the point of view of the users,
the key requirements are: self-service data access, interactive analysis, high availability and
performance, zero-administration client (thin client technology such as Java applets), tight
security, and unified metadata.
2. The Web to the Warehouse
Bringing the Web to the warehouse essentially involves capturing the clickstream of all
the visitors to your company's Web site and performing all the traditional data warehousing
functions. And you must accomplish this, near real-time, in an environment that has now
come to be known as the data Webhouse. Your effort will involve extraction,
transformation, and loading of the clickstream data to the Webhouse repository. You will
have to build dimensional schemas from the clickstream data and deploy information
delivery systems from the Webhouse.
Clickstream data tracks how people proceeded through your company's Web site, what
triggers purchases, what attracts people, and what makes them come back. Clickstream data
enables analysis of several key measures including:
Customer demand
Effectiveness of marketing promotions
Effectiveness of affiliate relationship among products
Demographic data collection
Customer buying patterns
Feedback on Web site design
A clickstream Webhouse may be the single most important tool for identifying,
prioritizing, and retaining e-commerce customers. The Webhouse can produce the following
useful information:
Site statistics
Visitor conversions
Ad metrics
Referring partner links
Site navigation resulting in orders
Site navigation not resulting in orders
Pages that are session killers
Relationships between customer profiles and page activities
Best customer and worst customer analysis
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3. The Web-Enabled Configuration

Figure 3.1 indicates an architectural configuration for a Web-enabled data warehouse.
Notice the presence of the essential functional features of a traditional data warehouse. In
addition to the data warehouse repository holding the usual types of information, the
Webhouse repository contains clickstream data.
The convergence of the Web and data warehousing is of supreme importance to every
corporation doing business in the 21st century.