What are Data Warehouses?
The amount of data available in a large, complex organization may be overwhelming. Some decision-makers may not even be fully aware of all the data that are actually collected. Furthermore, data are often collected on the same population by multiple agencies but stored in different locations. Data warehouses are one way to make data more manageable and more accessible for the researchers and decision-makers that need it most. Data warehouses serve as a central repository for all or most of the data collected by the various operating units and systems of an organization. A data warehouse organizes and stores data with a long historical perspective. The data are presented on a common platform from which information processing and analysis can take place. Data can then be analyzed from the perspective of the organization as a whole, rather than by individual units of organizations. The analysis can take the form of queries constructed to answer a specific question, but it may also take th
