Data Warehouse: 10 Definitions
“A subject oriented, integrated, time variant, and non-volatile collection of summary and detailed historical data used to support the strategic decision-making processes for the corporation.” (William H Inmon, “What is a Data Warehouse?”, Prism Vol. 1 (1), 1995)
“A database specifically structured for query and analysis. A data warehouse typically contains data representing the business history of an organization. Data in a data warehouse is usually less detailed and longer lived than data from an OLTP system.” (Microsoft Corporation, “Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 System Administration Training Kit”, 1999)
“The conglomeration of an organization’s data warehouse staging and presentation areas, where operational data is specifically structured for query and analysis performance and ease-of-use.” (Ralph Kimball & Margy Ross, “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” 2nd Ed, 2002)
“The data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, nonvolatile collection of data used to support the strategic decision-making process for the enterprise. It is the central point of data integration for business intelligence and is the source of data for the data marts, delivering a common view of enterprise data.” (Claudia Imhoff et al, “Mastering Data Warehouse Design”, 2003)
“A technology platform that stores business data for the purpose of strategic decision making. Data warehouses are normally the central integration point for large amounts of detailed, historical data from heterogeneous systems across the company to avail data for business intelligence.” (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, “Customer Data Integration”, 2006)
“An integrated, centralized decision support database and the related software programs used to collect, cleanse, transform, and store data from a variety of operational sources to support Business Intelligence. A Data Warehouse may also include dependent data marts.” (DAMA International, “The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge” 1st Ed., 2009)
“A subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and historical collection of summary and detailed data used to support the decision-making and other reporting and analysis needs that require historical, point-in-time information. Data, once captured within the warehouse, is nonvolatile and relevant to a point in time.” (David Lyle & John G Schmidt, “Lean Integration”, 2010)
“A subject-oriented collection of data that is used to support strategic decision making. The warehouse is the central point of data integration for business intelligence. It is the source of data for data marts within an enterprise and delivers a common view of enterprise data.” (Sybase, “Open Server Server-Library/C Reference Manual”, 2019)
“A data warehouse is a database designed to enable business intelligence activities: it exists to help users understand and enhance their organization’s performance. It is designed for query and analysis rather than for transaction processing, and usually contains historical data derived from transaction data, but can include data from other sources. Data warehouses separate analysis workload from transaction workload and enable an organization to consolidate data from several sources.” (Oracle)
“A data warehouse is a storage architecture designed to hold data extracted from transaction systems, operational data stores and external sources. The warehouse then combines that data in an aggregate, summary form suitable for enterprise-wide data analysis and reporting for predefined business needs.” (Gartner)
More definitions of “Data Warehouse” at http://sql-troubles.blogspot.com.
