Data Warehousing Helps Users Store, Retrieve, and Utilize Information

Data warehousing is a way of storing business data so that others can retrieve and use it. Another name for data warehousing is decision support system, because the data retrieved is pertinent to making business decisions. All large businesses need some sort of data warehousing, because as the size of the business increases so does the amount of data. This data pertains to customers, financial documents, legal documents and more. Aside from making this information accessible to the many business employees, data warehousing also keeps the data organized.

Data warehousing leaves much of the control to the user. It allows users to input and load data, and allows users to demand any amount of data retrieval at any time. With data warehousing, users always know how much data is loaded and retrieved. Data warehousing also creates a report for the individual user by turning the data into useful information. This way user can customize the reports to contain only the information he needs. Unfortunately, giving access to too many users may cause the data warehousing system to work slowly. Each person needs different levels of access and information causing the reporting requirements to change constantly.

Though everyone in a business may have access to the data warehousing system, they do not all necessarily have the same level of access. The system allows administrators to specify assign certain levels of access to particular users. Those lower-level employees will have access to less sensitive information. Higher employees will have access to more sensitive information. This type of security keeps data from falling into the wrong hands. Administrators may apply security defense on a per application basis, which would only restrict access of data via certain applications in the data warehousing system. Or, administrators may install security features on the entire data warehousing system. Whether they do this depends on the number of users and the number of applications accessing the data warehousing system among other things.

Data warehousing is a useful tool that many business managers should incorporate into their decision-making patterns. The reporting capabilities of data warehousing are useful to decision makers, because the information reflects the current progress of the business. The information also acts as a predictive tool for future events. Managers can use the information from data warehousing reports to determine the next steps for the company.