Business Intelligence/Prototype data mart


 * Purpose:
 * Input: Metadata, data architecture and list of facts and dimensions
 * Activities: Create ERD and data mart from ERD
 * Outputs: ERD, Physical Data Mart
 * Documentation: ERD Diagram and physical data mart

Data Mart Definition

"A data warehouse is an analytical database that is used as the foundation of a decision support system (Poe et al. 1998)." Poe et al. note that it is a commitment by the organization to ensure the appropriate data is available to the end user as needed. It integrates appropriate data from different data database so that it is available to decision makers.

A Business Intelligence frame draws data from a subset of the data warehouse called a data mart. A data mart is a subject-oriented or a subject-specific data warehouse (Poe et al. 1998).

This book does not go into the details of data warehouse administration. The goal is to make the analyst an informed consumer of data mart and data warehouse structures. It is assumed that the databases to create a data mart but a data warehouses does not exist. This book takes the reader through the process of making their first data mart. Creating the data mart will also serve to create the data warehouse. The reader will then go on to create a data warehouse in future chapters.